FLASH POINT
by
M. S. Craig

Copyright 1987 by M. S. Craig

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced in any portion without permission
in writing from the publisher.

Published by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc. 79 Madison Avenue New York, NY
10016

Chapter 1

Although Luke Adams had been away from California a third of his life,
he didn't give the changing landscape north of San Francisco a second
glance.  Instead, he pressed his rented car steadily against both the
miles and the speed limit.  Fear made a man single-minded.  He had been
deeply concerned to hear that the man who raised him, Ash Porter, had
been left crippled by a nearly fatal accident.  Ash himself had turned
that concern to fear with his last letter.  It was crazy enough for an
old man in a wheelchair to try to make it alone in a mountain cabin.  To
try that with an arsonist loose on the west slopes of the Sierras was
pushing past risk toward suicide.

It was hard to believe that Ash had even tried to keep him from coming
home.

"Another time," Ash had written.  "Almost any other time.  Things are
clean out of hand here.  I can't go into it all, but a firebug is loose
on this mountain.  I know you remember Jerry Hodges.  He's been hauling
as an independent.  Somebody rigged his truck and blew him to bits.
Never had a chance.  It's a wonder he's the only one, what with a loaded
gun inside every cabin door.  I appreciate your wanting to check up on
me after what happened.  You know I'd rather see you than any man alive,
but not now, Son.  Anytime but now.

Talk about laying a trip on somebody.  Here was a guy who had taken Luke
in as an orphaned kid, shoved him through high school, and then sent him
off with a stake.  He would have to be some kind of an ingrate to let a
firebug keep him away.  And somebody had to knock some sense into the
old man.  For Ash even to think about staying up there alone was
ridiculous.  Luke had put in for leave the day he got that letter.

He fretted the car across the Richmond Bridge and through the city to
head north again.  Now that he was nearing the old man's home in the
Sierras, the miles couldn't pass fast enough.  Either the valley road
stretched longer than he recalled, or impatience was distorting his
memory.

The last town on the valley floor was Featherton.

Just beyond the lumber-scaling station, he made a right turn onto the
mountain road.  Almost at once the air blew in cooler, fragrant with the
smell of the woods.  The incline was steep, and Luke held the rented car
to an easy fifty-five miles an hour and gave himself looking time. Good
looking time.  The west slope of the Sierras still belonged to him, as
comfortable and familiar as the lines of his own square jaw.

It had been a long trip from Germany and an expensive one, but only a
few miles of mountain road lay between him and Ash now.  Ash used to
tell him the mountains were layered in three ways, by the weather, the
trees that grew there, and the people who settled in to stay.  The first
level of the mountain, called the Digger Pine Belt, edged up from the
valley heat.  Although it was more built up than Luke remembered, the
sense of the area was the same: small fenced acreages that the mountain
people called "the suburbs," and a scattering of run-down farms without
enough dirt between the stones to scratch a living from.

He had forgotten how well they maintained those mountain roads, but
then, they had to.  This was lumbering country.  A loaded logging truck
could weigh thirty-seven tons, more than enough to chew up an ordinary
highway without anyone even noticing it was caught in the teeth of its
tire treads.

When the road had wound up above the 2,500-foot level, the trees began
thrusting higher into the afternoon sunlight, ponderosa pine and cedar,
broken up by stands of Douglas fir.  Luke grinned to himself. This was
his kind of mountain, homesteading country, with close little
communities like Bardenville and Madrone that lay just a few miles down
the mountain from Ash's place.

With the whole Sierra slope to choose from, the Indians had chosen this
yellow pine belt to settle into.  They'd stayed through one fight after
another ever since.  Maybe fighting came with the altitude.  Gold
prospectors had scrapped over claims and settlers for their homesteads.
As a boy Luke had listened to bitter wrangling between the powerful
lumber corporations and the independent operators like Ash Porter.  He
had even filled his own slot in the endemic rivalry between the valley
people and those on the mountain.  Above 3,500 feet the winters came too
harsh for anybody but loggers and hardrock miners, but this part of the
mountain was sweet-good weather, growing earth, and streams bright with
trout.

He had barely passed the turnoff toward Madrone when the vibration
shuddered through his rental car.

For a split second Luke's mind registered earthquake.  Natural response.
The ghosts of California's restless faults haunted the nightmares of any
kid who grew up here.  The blast trembled the air before he eased the
car to a stop at the edge of the road.  The reflection in the side-view
mirror was white, dense smoke billowing up from the mountain slope
behind him.

Not earthquake, but explosion, followed by fire.  The burgeoning pillar
rose, folding in on itself, cresting the tops of the trees and fanning
out to belly into a widening shroud over the gray-green of Douglas firs.
Already the pungency of evergreen was overwhelmed by the stench of
burning rubber.  He groaned, remembering Ash's words: "Not now, son.
Anytime but now.

Shouts filtered through the woods as a siren wailed from the valley
below.  Pocketing the car keys, he followed scent and sound, startled to
realize he had lost the knack of running swiftly over a littered forest
floor.  A spicy scent like witch hazel mingled with the smoke as he ran
through the brush thick with the weed he knew only as mountain misery.

The tower of flame was visible through the trees before he reached the
clearing.  People were running and shouting, scattering in all
directions.  A building, totally enveloped in leaping tongues of fire,
crackled and hooted, its heat scorching against his face.  A woman was
screaming, a high-pitched scream that faltered, found wind, and rose
again.  Around the blazing building a line of men were digging a fire
line to cut off its spread.  He came out of the woods behind Maude's
Place, where a line of men with shovels were already hacking at the
earth.  Garden hoses snaked in tortured spirals from the feed store and
the sides of the houses along the street.  A couple of them pumped
steady streams into the gaping side of what Luke remembered as being an
old, broken-down garage.  As he shielded his face against the blasts of
heat, he saw a soaked and shrouded figure stagger out of the blazing
building, crouching like an ox in harness from the weight of the limp
body he was dragging behind him.

Ten years of soldiering sharpens anyone's reflexes.  Luke had circled
Maude's line of garbage cans and had a sharpshooter spade in his hands
by the time they got that still-smoking body bundled across the street
and into Maude's Place.

In the frenzied hour that followed, he registered only glimpses of the
chaos around him.  Along with five or six others, he began to dig,
tossing the earth onto fresh fires that bloomed along the edge of the
woods.  The heat from the burning garage and the sweat of his efforts
glued falling sparks to his skin.  Luke cursed to himself.  He could
deal with pain, but it made him mad as hell, and fire scared him
spitless.  Why in the devil hadn't he just driven right on by and gone
straight up the mountain to Ash's, where he wanted to be?

A fire truck finally got there, and then another, followed by a
sheriff's car whose siren kept screaming, adding its decibel count to
the thunder of falling timbers and men's shouting voices.

Finally it was all but over.  Flames no longer leaped from the smoking
ashes of the garage.  The road was crowded with exhausted fire fighters
and gapers whose cars were lined up clear out to the highway. A burly
man in an open-necked sheriff's shirt circled the ruin listening and
nodding.  When he turned, Luke did a double take.  Eddie Dodge!  He
hadn't thought of Dodge twice since high school.  Eddie was nodding and
frowning as he scratched notes in a spiral pad.

Luke had probably fought with Eddie Dodge more times during those four
years than he had with any other single human being in his whole life.
It hadn't been anything he chose.  You either let the valley kids beat
you down with their mouths or you gave it back to them with your fists.
He hadn't won all those fights, but neither had he lost more than his
share.  A kid who's only a twist of wiry muscle has an odds-even chance
against a big guy who carries a lot of lard.  But Luke had made some
cold trips back up the mountain on that school bus because of Eddie
Dodge.  Luke washed Eddie's blood and his own out of his shirt more than
once to shiver home dripping wet rather than face Ash after another
fight.

All of the garage except the studs and a part of the folded roof had
been consumed or had fallen away.  Inside that black skeleton the
smoldering chassis of a burned car breathed mingled smoke and steam
against the background of scorched trees.  A few men with blackened
faces still fed desultory streams of water onto the smoking ashes.

Madrone hadn't changed much from what he remembered.  Maude's
restaurant, the feed store that carried every kind of hardware except
what you needed, the gas station with a couple of shelves of dusty
emergency groceries and a refrigerator case filled with drinkables and
butter, five or six houses, and this burned out hulk along with a
scattering of barns set back in the woods.

Eddie came over, planting himself solidly to stare into Luke's face.

"Do I know you?"  he asked.  "You used to.  Luke Adams."

Dodge frowned before grinning broadly.  Close up, the sheriffs badge
showed "Deputy."  That figured.  The mountains never got more than a
deputy, and like Dodge, these were usually guys from the valley
appointed by the county sheriff to deal with people they knew nothing
about.  "Good God.  Luke Adams.  Haven't thought of you in years."  He
looked him up and down.  "You've sure filled out."

Luke was perversely tempted to focus on Eddie's sagging belly and return
the compliment.

"Where'd you come from?"  Dodge went on.  Luke wagged his head toward
the road.  "I was driving up the mountain when I felt the explosion.  I
cut through the woods."

Eddie shook his head.  "No.  I mean how come you're here?  I thought you
went army."

"I did.  I'm on leave.  I was on my way up to see Ash."

Eddie took a minute to absorb this.  "That's right, sure.  He raised
you, didn't he?  After your mom.  Luke could almost watch him fitting
the pieces in place under that thatch of sweat-darkened pale hair. Eddie
frowned.  "Tough about Porter's accident."  He paused. "God only knows
how he's managing up there all alone, in a wheelchair and all. How's he
getting along?"

"I was on my way up there to see," Luke told him.  "That's right. That's
what you said.  See anybody in the woods?"  he went on.  "Maybe a man
running?"

"A lot of people were running when I broke through the woods."

"Nobody in particular?"  Luke shook his head.

"You'll be around if I need to talk to you.  At Ash's place?"

"Sure, Eddie," he said.

"Just in case," Dodge added.  Clearly he had been watching cop programs
on TV.  He had both the phrases and the tone of vague threat honed to a
fine edge of insinuation.

The crowd had thinned out.  Luke studied faces, looking for somebody
else he knew.  He saw Maude come out on the porch of her restaurant and
go back in, but she didn't notice him.  The sense of belonging that had
grown steadily through the drive up from the valley had deserted him. He
was only a curious stranger caught in a tragedy he couldn't feel.
Slender, wide shouldered men in faded jeans stared at the dying fire,
their faces ridged with concern.  Women had the luxury of tears; a few
sobbed quietly, but most of them stood silent and tear stained, standing
close to their men, some with wide-eyed children braced on one hip.
Their talk was subdued, whispery with the caution of the living in the
presence of the known dead.  Luke heard the phrase "Nan's boy" without
being able to put a face to it.  He felt people's eyes on him, narrowed
by curiosity.

Then he saw Burt Roberts, who had come in as resident manager for Larson
and Frane Lumber Company when Luke was growing up.  It was astonishing
how little ten years could change a man.  Roberts had that kind of
take-charge face that aged well.  His presence wasn't hurt by the way he
was dressed, either.  It was hard for a first sergeant in the army to
justify the cost of civilian clothes, but Luke had priced camel-hair
blazers like the smoke-streaked one over Roberts's arm. Roberts wasn't
hurting for money to dress like that.  But power and money always hung
out together.  Luke didn't recognize the people standing with Roberts-a
man who looked to be about Luke's age and a slender blond girl in riding
pants.

Finally, thank God, it was over and he could get up to Ash's, where he
belonged.  He knew for sure that Ash had been wondering what happened to
him for a good half-hour.  Ash would have seen the first wisp of smoke
from the fire with those binoculars of his.  By now he was probably
turning the air blue with the fury of his helpless concern. Luke
hesitated.  No path led through those woods.  He was safer going out to
the road and following it until he got to the car.  Once there, he sat a
moment, perfectly still.  He had eaten dinner with Ash's daughter Linden
in San Francisco the night before.  The evening had been wholly
unsatisfactory.  Not only had Linden shown a callous lack of interest in
her father's safety, she had also dismissed the arson on the mountain by
mouthing cliches about feuds.  There was enough danger of fire on the
mountain without human mischief.  Even with the good luck of late-August
rains, September could still see low flash points.  A man couldn't grow
up on that mountain without getting his consciousness raised.  When the
temperature was high and the humidity low enough, a pine didn't need
more than a carbon spark from the exhaust of a car to flash into fire.
He could remember whole months when the gauges outside the
forest-service office hung on red and cars weren't even allowed to drive
through the forests.  Trees are wood and wood is fuel and Bambi wasn't
the first or the last to get his that way.

Ash had said in his letter that Jerry Hodges had been blown up in his
truck.  Luke remembered Hodges.  Although Jerry was closer to Luke's age
than Ash's, he and the old man had been friends.  Luke had halfway
worshiped Hodges through grade school, when Jerry had been a star tackle
in high school.  But instead of college, he'd gone into lumbering, like
his dad before him.

Both Jerry's dad and Porter had done the one job in lumbering that even
impressed a cocky kid.  They were "fallers," the Samsons who walked into
the woods to bring down giants.  Not many fallers lived to be old men.
In Placer's, the roughest tavern in Bardenville, one whole wall was hung
with the boots of dead fallers.  It was tough, dangerous, lonely work.
Fallers preferred to go into the woods alone, knowing how many places
danger could wait for them.  To watch a good faller work, even from the
distance Ash always banished Luke to, was to be privy to magic.  One man
bringing down a single tree within an inch of where he wanted it to go.
When it struck the earth, the heart of the mountain missed a beat.  But
not until that tree struck could the faller be sure that a widow-maker
wasn't up there with his name on it.  Giant limbs or the lopped-off top
of the tree, invisible through the dense needles, fell straight down,
driving the faller into the earth.

Before Luke could pull back onto the road, a logging truck roared round
the curve ahead to thunder past.  The car swayed giddily from the draft.
Kid rules.  Look up the mountain and then feel the ground before you
cross the road.  Even when the driver wasn't giving the gas pedal the
benefit of his total body weight, the hurtling gravity of those logging
trucks loaded with Swaying tree trunks had defined deadly force for Luke
before he ever heard the phrase.

The inside of his car reeked with the stench of smoke.  He wished he
didn't keep hearing the sound of women crying.

The only time he had been back after finishing high school he had come
to admit to Ash that he wasn't making it out in the world and was going
to go army.  "Fighting's never paid off very well for you," Ash reminded
him.

Luke had been young enough then to color up at his words.  "I'm not a
hot headed kid anymore, Ash.  If I'm going to make it on my own, I need
training.  The army's the only easy way to get that."

"Anything that puts you into a fight is the hard way, Luke Adams."

So much for trying to tell a twenty-year-old anything.  Anyway, it had
been too late.  He had already signed on.

Not much had changed that first time.  Ash's daughter Linden was still
on the mountain, living with Ash and working for Burt Roberts at the
office of Larson and Frane, who owned most of the timberland around
there except what the government held.  Ash didn't like his daughter's
working for Roberts, but that wasn't surprising.  Small operators hated
the big companies on principle.  When government contracts came up, the
little guys didn't have a chance.  Whether the contracts were for
salvage or live lumber, the corporations could bid over market price,
gambling that inflation would catch up with them.  That squeezed
everyone else out.  And the company's hiring rankled.  With local
foresters out of work, they brought in young guys from outside.

Ash had kept him up on the news from home by letter.  Sometimes he even
sent the local paper.  Luke always meant to get back, but something
always came up.  None of his Stateside furloughs sounded long enough to
justify the cost of a quick trip back home.  Then he was in Germany and
drunk with the novelty of Europe.  Luke sent Ash a cuckoo clock from
Germany and binoculars from Switzerland.  That man would rather spot a
new bird than get a royal flush.  Ash's letters kept coming, and
sometimes Luke almost wore them out.  Ash wrote about new birds he'd
sighted, who'd gotten married, and who had bought a new pickup truck.

The personal news was always down at the end and tersely stated. In one
letter Ash wrote, Linden and I had one scrap too many.  She packed out
of here and is down in San Francisco, working for God knows who."  He
wrote Ash it was natural for a grown kid to want to leave home, even a
girl.  "You raise kids up and they take off.  I did, didn't I?"

Ash didn't mention Linden's leaving again except to say that Luke's
going off had been different: He and Ash had parted as friends.

Since Ash didn't write like clockwork, Luke didn't realize when the
letters stopped.  That was May and a lot was going on.  June came and
then July, with still no word from Ash.  Luke felt edgy about it and
tried to tell himself that Ash just got tired of scratching "APO" on
envelopes a couple of times a month.  After all, by that time he had
been doing it for ten years.

Luke kept in touch on his end anyway, ragging at Ash a little about
getting lazy in his old age.  The day the letter came from Ash, Luke put
in for a month's emergency leave.  The old man had been in an accident.

Ash was stingy with details, only saying that one of Larson and Frane's
lumber trucks went out of control and sideswiped him before jackknifing
on the road right above Madrone.  After doing all they could with
surgery and therapy, they had shipped him back home in a wheelchair.
"Don't take it hard," Ash told him.  "I tell myself I've probably done
my share of walking already."

Luke did take it hard.  Approval of his leave came through the day after
a car bomb killed one airman and another one's wife and injured some
twenty people at the Rhein-Main Air Base in Frankfurt.  He started
waking up sweaty, waiting for the days to pass.  Ash was all the family
he remembered, and probably more than he deserved considering what a
heller he'd been in high school.  That last letter from Ash arrived when
Luke was already packing.  Because Ash had been so explicit about his
not coming home, Luke didn't write him his plans.  Instead, he called
that morning just before leaving San Francisco.  Ash shouted at him over
the phone.  "You never did half learn to mind.  I tell you, Luke, you
don't want to come up here the way things are.  What kind of a soldier
are you, anyway?  Whoop it up down there in the city and have a helluva
good time.  That's what military leaves are all about."

Luke told him to put an extra potato in the soup and tie up the dog. Ash
was still ranting when Luke hung up the phone.

The general store was already lit against the coming darkness. Luke
strained to see the figure planted behind the cash register.  So Ruby
was still running the store.  He slowed going past Burt Roberts's place.
The house, with the local office of Larson and Frane built off to the
left, still looked good, substantial behind its circle drive.  To the
right of the house Roberts had added stables, a long line of them, with
corrals and pens.  The last section was built up, with something like a
carriage house on top with windows and a weather vane.  The hanging
wooden sign at the drive's entrance bore the silhouette of a prancing
horse and the single word "AMIE."

Only two miles more to home.  Luke gave the car a boost of extra gas, as
excited as a kid at the thought of seeing Ash again.  Never mind the
father he never knew and the mother who was a fading voice.  Ash was
family.

The familiar drive wound past the Porter mailbox and meandered into a
clearing past a line of second growth ponderosa pine.  In spite of the
disappointing evening with Linden, he was glad she had warned him that
the place would look different.  Ten years before, Ash's house and the
cabin across the lot had nestled in a grove of Douglas firs.  The big
trees were now gone, leaving both buildings standing in what was almost
a clearing unless you counted the second-growth shrub, mostly manzanita
that was growing between the stumps.  Bandit, the dog who roared down
the drive toward the car, was big and dark, with an obvious
decision-making problem.  His tail was wagging as vIolently as he was
barking.  At least Ash would know he had finally gotten there.

Ash had always called the place a cabin, but it was so much more than
that: cedar shingles, a deep-pitched roof, and a chimney darkened by
fragrant fires.  Wooden tubs still spilled scarlet-and-white petunias
onto the battleship-gray paint of the porch.  Starting those seeds had
been one of Luke's childhood chores.  Beyond that a giant stand of
sunflowers gaped slavishly toward the giant trees blocking the last
light of the sun.  The double-staggered row of beehives had been moved
closer to the rental cabin.  Shaded by the giant leaves of castor
plants, they wandered down the slope between the big house and the
second cabin.  Ash had written, two or three years before, that he had
been "careless and earned a good stinging.  I'm sensitized now.  I'd get
the things off the place if I didn't like watching them so much."  The
little cabin Ash kept rented out showed its years.  The roof with its
burden of fallen fir needles seemed to be wholly supported by the
blooming vine on the drainpipe.

The dog's tail won.  By the time Luke reached the porch, his hands were
slick with saliva and only a rapid right to the animal's chest had saved
him from a face washing.  Luke noticed the wooden ramp that had been
added at the end of the stairs.  At least Ash was able to go in and out
of the house without assistance.  A tantalizing scent of browned beef
poured through the open door as he mounted the stairs.  "Luke," Ash
called from inside.  "Shove that critter away and get in here."  A lamp
bloomed in the dark room as he pushed the door open.

He was prepared to see Ash in a wheelchair, but not looking the way he
did.  Time, along with the accident, had reduced him to a small curl of
a body nestled between cushions.  Only his arms were still full sized,
still swelling with muscle.

This had been a man who had felled Douglas firs all alone, as Luke,
banished to a point well beyond danger, had waited to clap his hands to
his ears at the thunder of a giant's fall.

Once Ash's hair had been as black as Linden's.  Now it was mingled gray
and white and almost shoulder length.  Ash's rough hands, callused from
the wheels, held Luke's shoulders tight for a painful moment.  The old
man's eyes were as clear and blue as the noon sky in winter.  "God, it's
good to see you, Luke," he said angrily.  "But I told you to stay away.
I made that clear!"

"So I never half minded," Luke told him.  The old man s hair smelled
like the rough-cut Durham he always smoked.  Home.

"Come into the light where I can see you," Ash ordered.

The library table under the window was cluttered with books of all
sizes.  The copy of Birds of the West was noticeably shabby.  Beside it
lay the binoculars Luke had priced in horror and come back twice to
finger before he had let go of the money and had them sent to him.  "See
how much time has passed?"  Ash complained.

"I don't know whether you want coffee or whiskey."  Luke laughed.
"Whiskey.  I want to see if yours still tastes as much like furniture
polish as it did when I sneaked it as a kid.  But that's only if you
join me," he added hastily.  "Little rotter."  Ash grinned, wheeling
toward the yellow oak washstand where he had always stored his hooch.
"After that, we'll eat.  If you can't smell that pot roast, you have a
helluva cold."

Luke knew better than to protest being waited on.  And to tell the
truth, he was impressed by how well the old man was managing this small
world of his.  But too many dangers surrounded this tailored cocoon.  "I
don't deserve this kind of welcome after you told me not to come.

Ash snorted.  "If you had done what I told you, I would have known you
for an impostor-.  He poured a double shot of Teacher's Scotch and
looked up.  "Rocks?"  he asked.

"Rocks are fine."

With his back turned, Ash clawed ice from a freezer bin in the kitchen
just off the front room.  The refrigerator was new, as was the square
modern gas stove where the old range had stood.  Luke studied it
thoughtfully.  Propane gas had to be delivered fairly regularly.

The driver would be one more person keeping an eye out that Ash was
functioning.  The stove had a fire burner on the end that would hold
enough wood to take the chill off the house.  Somebody had to keep that
box filled with lengths of cedar wood.  "I don't know why you had to
come back while all this hullaballoo is going on.  You didn't see
Linden, did you, on the way up?"

"She bought me dinner last night.  She looks great."

"I guess she told you she never comes home."

"I got that impression," Luke admitted.  Ash sat without moving for a
moment, his back still to Luke.  "Regret pays no bills, but I knew that
Linden didn't take off right after high school like you did.  We might
be better friends now if she had."

Cryptic.  Luke throttled back a dozen questions that were none of his
business.  When he went away to the army, Linden had been queen of her
world.  She was luminously happy, loving her job, loving her life. As a
twenty-year-old still tingling from the indignities of adolescence, he
had been jealous as hell of that girl.  Even the unfair way she treated
him when Ash wasn't around hadn't diminished his awe of her. What had
happened to Linden up here on this mountain?  What catalyst had turned a
bright, warm girl into a sleek, brisk woman, bitter against her own
kind?

Ash handed Luke his drink and touched his own glass against the rim.  "I
swore I wouldn't bother you about the fire until after supper, but it
looks like you got into it for yourself."  He nodded at Luke's stained
shirt.  "It looked fast and dirty from here.  What went up?"

"That old garage across the street from Maude's Place in Madrone," Luke
told him.  "When it blew up, I was on the road above.  When I got there
everybody in town was fighting it.  Finally the fire truck came..

Ash listened intently, frowning.  Suddenly he broke In.  'Today isn't
Saturday, is it?"

"Sure it is."

Ash turned away, drawing a deep breath.  "But the garage was empty when
it happened.  Right?"

The old man was full of fresh astonishment.  How could he know about the
dead man they had hauled out of there?  But the way he looked, nauseated
almost, Ash had clearly anticipated the worst.

"A man was caught in there," Luke told him.  "I don't guess he got out?"
Luke shook his head.

"Dammit, Luke.  I told you not to come up here.  I told you things
weren't like they used to be.  This place Is a powder keg with a maniac
diddling with the fuse.  That could just as well have been you.  Cars
have been blown up, too, Molotov cocktails flying out of nowhere, and
now this."  His voice trailed off and he turned toward the window.
"Saturday.  Tom Harrow spends every Saturday in that old garage he rents
from Maude.  Rain or shine, if he has a day off, he's in there working
on that fool car of his.  It was Tom, wasn't it?"

He was holding on to the arms of his wheelchair with knuckle-whitening
force.  The flesh of his face, rumpled by time and pain, was hardened
and flushed as Luke leaned to put a hand on his shoulder.  Thin blades
of bone under worn cotton.  What about your safety?  Luke wanted to
shout.  If it's dangerous for a young man with two legs, how about you?
Instead, he shook his head.  "I didn't hear the man's name," he told
him.  "But somebody said something that sounded like 'Nan's boy." That's
all I heard."

When Ash put out his empty hand, Luke set his drink in it.  He drained
the glass and set it down hard between the books on his library table.
Then he lifted the glass, delicately wiped off the bottom of it, and put
it down again.  "Tom," he said out loud to himself.

His voice roughened with anger.  "But he wasn't any man.  Only a boy.
Seventeen just past.  A young, talented boy...  an artist really, if you
want the truth."

"Ash," Luke began.  "I'm really sorry.  Ash shook his head and cleared
his throat.  "I'll get a handle on it.  It just hits home."  As he
spoke, he turned and reached for the phone.  "I've got to get hold of
that boy's mother somehow."

His voice turned cross again.  "Take your stuff on over to the cabin.
It's readied for you.  When supper's on the table, I'll ring the bell."
Luke hesitated.  It was hell to have to let the old man wait on him like
that, but Ash had always known how to handle him.  He frowned at Luke
fiercely, the way he used to.  "If you know what's good for you, you'll
come flying in here at the first clang of that bell!"  As Luke stepped
onto the porch the dog came off his rug like a shot, a dripping tongue
aimed for his face.  Luke was pushing him away when he heard Ash shout
after him.  "And don't spoil that dog like you did the last one!"
Chapter 2

Luke had reconstructed that cabin in his mind so many times that he
hesitated before opening the door.  Ash had elevated him to manhood the
summer he turned sixteen by letting him move his stuff out of the spare
bedroom and into that cabin.  Any idiot can mouth cliches about trust.
Ash put cash money on the line.  You can always rent a cabin like that
up in the mountains, at least for a month or two in summer.  That was
how Ash got hung with an extra kid in the first place.  Luke's mother
had rented the place, lived there a couple of years, and then died...
leaving a four year-old boy Ash either had to keep and raise or send
down the mountain to be "fostered out," as he put it.  If that place was
not what he remembered, Luke was going to find it tough to deal with.

Linden had been about eight when Luke's mother died.  He had always
envied Linden because she had been old enough to remember his mother. He
long ago quit kidding himself that he recognized the woman in the
snapshots Ash gave him.  His mother was more shadowy to him than the
fused black-and-white lines of those photos, not visible at all, but
remembered through a wordless voice, rhythmical and melodious.

Luke let out his breath in a slow whistle of relief when he stood in the
open door.

The cabin was spare, with the same wood-burning stove dominating the
principal room.  The Stove was identified as "Ashley" by a line of
handsome Roman letters just above its round belly.  Graceful metal legs
supported it on a square slate base.  Just beyond that, the room
suffered an identity crisis and became a kitchen whose window, above the
sink, stared bleakly into the darkness.  The bedroom and bath were
minuscule but adequate.  Curved ornamental legs again.  Luke chuckled,
looking at the legs of that tub, remembering Ash waxing philosophical
about them when Luke was complaining about scrubbing under there on his
stomach.  "Funny thing about fashion," Ash said, "the legs of bathtubs
disappeared under porcelain about the time women began to show theirs
off.  You suppose that'll ever switch again?"

The wooden floors were blanched from the diligence of scrub brushes. Ash
had said it was "readied."  With the windows open, the sounds of the
forest filtered in.  Crazy.  Twenty-four hours earlier Luke had watched
Linden Porter turn heads in a French restaurant and then sit across from
him, delicately holding a crystal wine glass and talking scathingly
about this place for over an hour.  How could anyone hate what filtered
in through those windows, wind brushing the night with restless
branches, the hollow colloquy of owls?

He had written to Linden Porter as soon as he heard about Ash's
accident.  He had only a box number in San Francisco that Ash had sent
him when she first moved away.  Linden's reply came only a few days
before his travel arrangements were concrete.  Her note, which bore no
return address, did give her phone number along with a request that he
call on arrival and plan to have dinner with her that Friday night
before coming up to the mountain.

The restaurant was a few blocks north and east of Union Square.  It was
small, maybe ten tables, and chefrun, with a staff of wiry young men
bearing a strong family resemblance.  The room was appealing in spite of
being a little dark for his taste, the tables lit only by candles
flanking bud vases of little white daisies that smelled like
chrysanthemums.  He got there early with a visitor's insecurity about
gauging time and distance in a city turned strange to him by time.  The
moment Linden came through the door he had a thrust of old childish
envy.  As always, Linden had it together.  She was still slender, but
had lost the look of fragility he remembered.  She walked with the leggy
confidence of a woman accustomed to turning heads.  Instead of aging,
she had acquired polish.  Her straight black hair swayed loose to the
shoulders of a rose colored silk suit the exact shade of her lipstick.
Luke had an insane urge to focus entirely on her ankles; as a boy he
remembered fantasizing that he could circle one of them with a
forefinger and thumb.

"Luke," she said, the inflection rising.  The cheek she offered smelled
expensive.  The waiter got to her chair before he did.  With the candle
guttering from the flirt of her napkin into her lap, Luke wondered if he
could possibly break through her crust of childhood resentment and make
a friend of her.  He had always hoped such a day would come, but Ash's
condition made their cooperation vital.  Between them, he and Linden
ought to be able to work out a solution that would make Ash safe as well
as happy.

When Luke was little, Linden's way with him had been confusing. She was
quietly civil when Ash was around, only to turn bitter and caustic when
they were alone.  Later her resentment made sense to him. It must have
been traumatic for an only kid that young to yield space in her father's
life and household.  It had to make it harder that he was nobody special
but just a kid who got dropped there by the double accidents of
geography and death.  Even though Linden couldn't have been much more
than a secretary to Burt Roberts back on the mountain, she had been a
class act.  She was still a class act, not only knowing how to dress but
clearly having money enough to afford the best.  When he had called, the
voice of the recording machine had given him a business name, 'Porter
Properties."  Whatever that meant, it was keeping Linden in good
threads.

There wasn't any law that you have to be able to see the pupils in the
blackness of human eyes, but the total darkness of Linden's eyes
disconcerted him.  Why had he remembered those same eyes sparkling with
sudden lights?  "I was really astonished to hear from you, Luke."  Her
voice was unchanged from the old days.  "I can't believe you really
intend to go back to that mountain...  even to visit."

He shrugged.  "If there wasn't anything else, I grew up there."

"But you left," she reminded him.  "It was time."  He shouldn't have to
explain to her why he left.  Not only was he more indebted to Ash than
any man should be to another, but he was fresh from the experience of
high school.  She must have gone through some of that agony herself.
Brains, looks, athletic ability...  nothing gave you entry when you went
down off the mountain into high school.  You were a "hill kid," created
to be despised.  Four years of that either drove you back into the hills
or as far away as you could travel.  "But there is something else,
Linden.  I realize I haven't seen Ash yet, but no matter how strong he
is, he can't be safe up there on that mountain alone. There's only you
and me.  I was hoping-"

"You and me and Ash," she interrupted.  "Maybe you've forgotten that Ash
Porter is a law unto himself.  He intends to run his own show, and I,
for one, want no part of it."

Her cavalier dismissal of Luke's own consuming concern left him
speechless as she went on.  "Aside from seeing my father, I can't
imagine what a trip back to that mountain can possibly offer a world
traveler like you.

Luke looked at her.  She wasn't going to get off that easy.  He had come
to talk to her about Ash, and he intended to talk about it whether she
wanted to listen or not.  In the meantime, this world traveler opening
was borderline insulting.  World traveler, indeed.  Join the army and
enjoy Europe in the last third of the twentieth century; the Red
Brigade, hostage crises, oil embargoes, car bombs on American bases, and
screaming demonstrations about nuclear armament, not even to mention the
ubiquitous paranoia that had grown out of random terrorist attacks. "I
learned things up there that have been priceless to me," he told her.

"I can't imagine how that could be."  Even if she had phrased that as a
question he would have sidestepped answering it.  Thanks to Ash's
raising, he had come off the mountain green and hungry but liking
himself.  Only later had he learned there was nothing like the
combination of dogged self-reliance with a healthy ego to help you
survive in a world where both your passport and your uniform could
invite disaster.  But it was strange that Linden didn't phrase anything
in a question.  Not strange, but ridiculous.  questions and answers knit
the bridge of passed time.  How could two people possibly communicate
for an entire evening by trading statements?  And how could he possibly
get through this evening without telling her exactly how he felt about
her callous disregard for Ash's welfare?

But if this was her game, two could play.  "I have to admit I don't know
what business you're into."

She shrugged.  "Investment management.  Not the most exciting thing in
the world."  At his glance, she went on.  "Stocks, bonds, the
commodities market.  you name it, I'll quote the current expectations.
But it is pretty dull, all those numbers and most of them born of
informed guessing."

"But you do have your own company, he said.  "That must be satisfying."
At her quizzical glance, he explained.  "Maybe I just figured you were
the Porter of Porter Properties."  She nodded.  "Of course, the
telephone.  It is my own company, very small."

"And you are into investments.  Hey."  He smiled at her.  "Would you
believe I just bought my first lottery ticket since I got Stateside? If
I win, I'll put it all in your hands and clip coupons.

Maybe she only smiled bewitchingly when she said no.  "Sorry, Luke.
You'll get lots of other offers.  Mine is a closed corporation.  All
very dull."  A second invitation to drop it.  She didn't want to talk
about some sensible plan for her father.  He didn't want to talk about
terrorism and she didn't want to discuss investment opportunities. "Good
God, Linden," he wanted to shout at her.  "We grew up together. You're
the closest to a sibling I ever had.  You were the only woman I really
knew as a child.  Don't treat me like a stranger!  And don't pretend
that your responsibility to Ash can be swept away in a few glib
phrases."

Then it struck him that whatever had driven that wedge between her and
her father had not only severed her allegiance to Ash permanently but
had walled him out, too.  Not fair.

Then he would have to deal with Ash's situation on his own.  But that
still left the problem of the evening.  They hadn't even ordered drinks,
and already he was dredging for the next topic.  Did they have mutual
friends up in the mountains?  His mind went blank.  Then it happened.  A
screech of brakes, the cacophony of metal on metal, and shocked voices
shouting.  A siren wailed up the street outside, eliciting a furious
explosion of car horns.  Waiters strained discreetly over the half
drapes at the windows and a couple from another table stood, napkins in
hand, to stare into the street.  Linden looked over with a mild
liveliness in her expression.

"That reminds me.  Madrone has even made it into the city papers this
summer.  Fire on the mountain and all that."  Her flippant tone was
grating in view of Ash's situation.  "Your father takes it very
seriously."

"Ash doesn't have enough to distract him, since he's tied to that
wheelchair.  And all his birds have flown."

Luke stared at her, puzzled.  Ash was the only man he ever heard of who
had kept a lifetime bird record.  Even as a kid it had blown Luke away
to realize that from the time Ash Porter was eight years old, he had
kept a journal of every new bird he saw and recorded their species, the
season he had sighted them, and where.  Linden couldn't mean what it
sounded like she did.

She laughed softly.  "God, you're literal.  I meant he hasn't any human
beings under his control.  I'm gone, you're gone.  He rented the cabin
to a woman named Nan Harrow for a couple of years, but now she and her
boys, Will and Tom, are gone, too.  He has nothing to think about except
what he reads in that miserable rag of a paper.

She met his gaze without smiling before turning to the waiter at her
side.  "I'll have Tanqueray on the rocks with a twist.  What will it be
for you, Luke?"  By the time he placed his order, she was deep in the
study of the menu.  She spoke quietly, her voice firm.  "This is my
treat, you know.  My city, my treat."

"That's ridiculous," he protested.

Her eyebrows lifted as she looked up.  "I invited you."  Cool class.

Back to the menu again.  Then it struck him.  She didn't ask questions
because she didn't want to give answers of her own.  What had managed to
toughen Linden Porter without marking that beguiling surface? Or had his
loneliness as a child made him imagine the wonderful humor he remembered
in her, the magnetic warmth?

She shrugged.  Slender, almost bony shoulders moved the light along the
drape of the rose silk.  Then she took a second run at trying to talk
him out of visiting Ash.  "Forgive my candor, Luke, but if you can get
out of this trip to the mountains, you should do It.  Spend your time
here in the city.  San Francisco will look different and better than it
did when you were twenty and broke.  All you are going to find on that
mountain is a time warp...  same people, same lifestyle, same old
simmering feuds.  Dull."

She caught his resentment.  "Okay," she said lightly.  "You liked it as
a kid better than I did.  But I do hate to see a grown man clinging to
romantic notions.  And you aren't going to like the changes you find.
Since you left the mountains for good reasons, you shouldn't go back
unless your reasons are equally compelling."

What better reason could a man have?  If Linden didn't understand how
concerned he was about her dad, how deeply he loved him, and how much he
was in debt to him, he couldn't get it across in the length of an
evening.  Anyway, he was suddenly woefully tired.  The jet lag built
into his flight from the East Coast had given his Scotch a quantum kick.
All that sounded good to him was to sleep against the next day's long
drive up into the mountains.

Maybe he could jerk himself awake by making a game of the evening,
thinking of it as a contest.  If he trapped Linden into asking him a
question, she owed him ten million dollars.  If he didn't he owed it to
her.

The siren wailing outside as the ambulance started away reminded him of
the fear between the lines of Ash's letter.  "Tell me what has changed
on the mountain," he suggested.

Ploys born of desperation sometimes work.  She talked through the hearts
of romaine piqued with a subtle vinaigrette and the pasta with scallops
and morels that followed.  The wine she selected arrived, was tasted,
and was served, a pale glittering wine in a thin-necked green bottle.

"You know about Ash's accident," she said without meeting his eyes. She
didn't pause, but he broke in anyway.

"Only that he was sideswiped by one of Larson and Frane's trucks and has
been left in a wheelchair.  What happened?"

She gave him the full force of these dead-black eyes.  "It's a typical
mountain story, I'm afraid.  A loaded truck was on the straightaway
between Ash's ranch and Madrone.  Some idiot fired a wild shot in the
woods that smashed the truck's windshield.  The driver ducked.  By the
time he recovered himself he had sideswiped Ash and the truck had
jackknifed.  He was lucky to crawl out alive himself.  That's a lot of
weight to have flying out of control at that speed."

"Did the driver see who fired the shot?  They must have had a hearing."

"They had hearings all right.  Ash's hospitalization didn't come cheap
to the insurer.  The driver, a man named Madison Ford, was only quoted,
that was all.  He ended up at Maude's after the police left the accident
scene.  He was raving, swearing he'd get the bastard who fired that
shot.  Instead, he took off."

Luke stared at her.  "What does that mean?"

"He took off, left the mountain before even testifying at the hearing.
They looked for him but never caught up with him."

"Why would a guy take off like that?  That doesn't make sense.

"Of course it does, Luke.  You have to remember that Ash was in pieces
when the ambulance got there.  Nobody would have given you a nickel for
his chances.  Ford was just an itinerant driver with no roots on the
mountain.  I can understand his turning chicken and running. Staying
wasn't going to put Ash back together."

There was more Luke wanted to ask, but she hummed on without hesitating
long enough for him to break In.  I do agree with you.  Ash is a fool to
stay up there in the shape he's in.  He's completely vulnerable, and
there's too much to do on that place even if he could find responsible
help.  But he's bullheaded, Luke.  It's a wonder he didn't give up
before the accident.  This was only the last of a series of hard knocks.
It started with two years of severe drought that brought a killer
infestation of bark beetles.  The Douglas firs around the house all had
to be taken out.  I guess since the accident the loss of those trees can
be looked at as good or bad.  The place has got to look like hell
without those trees, but if Ash is going to be stubborn enough to stay
there, he can at least see everything that happens on the mountain with
those fancy binoculars you sent him."

"It's got to look like hell," she had said.  Did that mean she hadn't
even been back to see her father since his accident?

It was clearly Luke's turn to ante up something to keep the
conversational pot boiling.  She hadn't mentioned marijuana, the one
thing everyone thought of when they heard where he was from.  "How about
the great cash crop I remember from the Seventies?  That mountain has a
worldwide reputation for producing truckloads of the best dope money can
buy."

She laughed.  "That used to be true, but the word got around to the
federals, too.  Plantings are always being burned off or chemically
destroyed.  They even raided one big drug factory up there, not
marijuana but heavy stuff...  recreational chemistry complete with
copper vats."  She tightened her shoulders and smiled.  "There's a great
tug-of-war going on here in the city.  Some genius realized you could
grow magnificent marijuana hydroponically under artificial lights.
Point, counterpoint.  Somebody looked at those astronomical electric
bills and figured out what was going on.

"Nipped it in the bud?"  he asked, amused in spite of himself.  She
shook her head.  "There's always a way to take an end run around the
law.  The city growers just install saunas or whirlpools.  This gives
them a double bargain, a perfect excuse for inflated power use plus
capital improvements on the property."

They had worn that out.  "Tell me about this arson business."

She stirred in her seat.  "Stupid mountain fever of some kind.  The
paper keeps mentioning old feuds, but I am guessing it's some kook with
a grudge to settle.  Work is scarce and cash is hard to come by.  The
devil's workshop and all that."

Luke frowned thoughtfully.  "If the drought killed a lot of trees there
has to be some lumbering activity."  Her glance at him was startled. Had
she forgotten he had been a boy tailing a lumberman through those woods?
Dead trees had to be cut down and taken out of those forests. If not,
the bark beetles spread to healthy trees, or the trees caught fire in
storms, or fell and damaged healthy trees.  "Work is work even if it's
only trees taken down for salvage."

She tightened her lips.  "Salvage wood pays next to nothing...  a few
cents a board foot when a foot of live lumber comes in close to a
hundred dollars."

"I'm amazed that lumber prices have held," he told her.  "Overseas we
keep reading that home building and general construction haven't pulled
out since the recession."

She smiled at him.  "You sound as if you were the one in commodities.
Lumbering is down, but not as much as you'd think.  The big companies
gamble on futures.  Those woods are full of decks of prime lumber
sitting under sprinklers, waiting for the market to recover." She
straightened in her chair, a signal for closure.  "I hope you don't mind
making this an early evening, but tomorrow is a killer day."

She cocked her head a little and leaned across the table, her perfume
overwhelming the pungent scent of the daisies.  "Think seriously about
canceling that trek up to the Madrone.  You could knock your rustic
romantic illusions into a basket."

Outside, a uniformed man with a push broom was sweeping broken glass
back against the curb.  Linden looked at Luke doubtfully as the cab she
had signaled pulled up.  "Do you realize that nobody up there ever
forgets anything?  And your precious Ash is probably the worst of them."

He stared at her.  Good God, that was a question.  Did he owe her ten
million dollars?  Luke waved at her through the cab window and turned
away.  Rhetorical questions didn't count.  Anyway, she'd only squander
the ten million on fancy clothes and expensive perfume.

Ash's bell clanged from the cabin across the clearing.  In a way Linden
had been right.  This place did feel like a time warp.  Luke had a flash
freaky memory of Ash solemnly examining his hands and face before
letting him sit down to dinner.

An oval roaster held a steaming pot roast surrounded by brown quartered
potatoes and whole onions in thick gravy.  Bread, butter, with an open
jar of beet horseradish rounding out the fare.  How did Ash manage all
this-groceries in, garbage out, cooking a meal just as he had in the old
days?  Never mind that he was skating on borrowed time; he was cutting a
pretty fancy figure.  This wasn't going to make it any easier for Luke
to broach the subject of his leaving this place.

Ash was surprisingly voluble, given how depressed he had been earlier.
"Everything okay over at the cabin?"

"Wonderful," Luke told him.  "I heard owls talking."  Ash nodded. "I saw
one earlier this week, just at dusk, hunting."  He looked up brightly.
"Did I write you that I sighted a great horned owl a couple of summers
ago?  Looked close enough to touch, thanks to your glasses. They must
have cost a bundle, but it wasn't wasted.  Wait'll I show you the
project those binoculars of yours started me on.  You aren't going to
believe your own eyes.  Luke grinned to himself.  That remark was pure
Ash Porter for "Thanks."

"That was your first great horned owl, then?"  He nodded. "Unbelievable,
those birds.  They stand two feet tall with a five-foot wingspan.
Farther up north they call them the 'tigers of the woods.. When one
passes close you hear the whisper of death."

"Whisper of death," he repeated, echoing his own words.  He pushed back
his plate.  "Death.  After I talked to Nan Harrow, the sheriff called.
The doctor was still examining Tom, but he was guessing Tom's car fell
on him.  crushing him.  He's trying to figure out what came first, the
jack slipping or the explosion and fire.  The gas tank blowing up could
have rocked that car off the jack.  No matter how the coroner's inquest
turns out, Sheriff Dodge has scheduled a hearing on Monday.  He wants
you to come."

"He half warned me of that.  It's silly to call me in.

I walked in out of the woods when the fire was already going."

"Everybody who was anywhere close will be there.

If I know that courthouse down there, a lot of people who weren't within
ten miles of the place will be there, too.  As deputy sheriff, Dodge is
deputy coroner, too.  It's his job to piece some sense out of this."

"Surely the inquest will settle the cause of death."

"There's more to it than cause.  A man can only die about four ways.
That inquest isn't likely to come up with suicide or natural causes.

"So they only have accident or foul play?"  Luke asked.

"And the means is confusing," Ash added.  "With a car explosion like
that, it's hard to fix whether there really was arson.  That gas would
be thrown around everywhere."

"But they are talking arson?"

"A couple of people reported seeing a man running right after the
explosion.  Sometimes they put together a strike team to investigate a
multiple crime like that possible arson, possible murder, and robbery to
boot."

"Robbery?"

Ash nodded.  "Eddie also told me he went up to check out Tom's cabin and
found it had been ransacked, even the floorboards pried up."

"But you told me this Tom was just a kid.  Didn't he still live with his
mother?"

The question made Ash uncomfortable.  He waved Luke back into his chair
as he began to clear the table.  "Tomorrow you can help.  Tonight you're
company.  He shook his head.  "Nan Harrow and her boys moved into that
cabin where you are when they first came up on the mountain.... That
must have been four years ago, about the time Linden took off. Nan's boy
Will is a rock, but Tom went out of control this summer.  God only knows
what got into him.  He was talented, too, but he took a crazy streak and
finally just up and walked out on her."

"But how can a kid like that live?"  His voice turned distant. "Oh,
different ways.  He worked for me around here a little and did a lot of
photography for me until I got hurt, and he's always gone sniping."

Luke had forgotten that word.  For a minute his head went sniping...
sniper," and he pictured a rifle barrel spitting fire from a half-open
window.  Then he remembered sniping in the mountains was different. Boys
and sometimes men panned gold along the watershed all summer, sleeping
out and living on fresh trout.  Luke remembered high school friends who
had come out in the fall with as much money as they could have made
sweating in the peach groves in the valley.

Ash handed Luke a tea towel and ordered him to help dry.  One
after-dinner Scotch and that high, clean air laid Luke out before nine.

Luke had one good long day with Ash before the scheduled hearing and the
arsonist hit another time.  When Luke got over to his place that next
morning, Ash had bacon staying warm on a platter in the oven and the
grease waiting for Luke's egg order.

"I don't need to spoil that dog of yours," Luke told him.  "He's already
rotten.  I only got up this early to keep him from scratching your door
down."

Ash laughed.  "I sent him.  I don't make biscuits to turn to rocks for
slugabeds."

"You're after something," Luke said wisely.  "You never made breakfast
biscuits in your life without an ulterior motive."

Ash grinned.  "If you can get me and my wheel into that car of yours,
I'd like to take a ride.  Will drives me here and there when he's been
around, but he's been away most of the past two weeks.  I've got an
acute case of cabin fever."

Did he dare take that remark as an opener?  Ash didn't give him time.
Instead, he looked up and smiled.  "That Will Harrow is one fine boy, if
you can call a man of twenty a boy.  I got real attached to Nan Harrow
and those kids when they were living here.  Thank God Will took interest
in the bees, or they would have had a tough season.  While I was off in
the hospital Nan and Will took care of this place, then, when I was sent
home, they wore themselves out fixing up things here so I could manage.
"Had Tom already moved away from home then?"

"No, but he was on the way out.  He came to see me in the hospital just
once, to bring me some pictures.  He wasn't really himself that day, and
by the time I got home, he and Nan were at loggerheads.  He had some
kind of work that produced enough money to go to his head.  He wouldn't
even tell Nan who he was working for or what he was doing, but he got
cocky and quick tempered, not like himself at all.  Naturally she was
worried to death."  He shrugged.  "Such a talented kid.  Too bad, just
too bad."

Luke pushed his plate back, seeing that smoking corpse being dragged out
of the inferno of that garage.

Ash's mind was still on Will.  "Having Will around was almost like
having you back home the way he helped me out, kept me in firewood, and
tended the bees."

"Just for the record, Ash, I think you need somebody up here all the
time, maybe living in that cabin..  Ash didn't let him finish.  His face
paled and he leaned toward Luke angrily.

"Don't you start that.  Every busybody on this mountain has taken on my
business since that accident, and I'm stuffed to the gills with it."

He fell silent and started to clear the table.  Luke watched him whip
the tray into the kitchen and begin cleaning up.  What kind of an
argument could he put up when Ash could manage like this?

When the guys kidded Luke about staying single, he always told them he
was looking for a girl who could cook and keep a kitchen as well as Ash
Porter.  And bring down Douglas firs, of course.  Would they believe a
wheelchair?  That sink and stove shone when he loaded Ash and his chair
into the car and set out with him, binoculars over Ash's thin shoulder.

It was easy enough to see what Ash wanted to look at.  They set off
toward the north, where a thin wavering of smoke rose above the tops of
the trees.  "I noticed that smoke this morning and hoped it was a slash
pile," Luke told him.

Ash nodded.  "It was a big one, too.  It was already good-sized when I
got hurt last spring.  It's been smoking there a week or two now.
Another good rain should damp it out."

The roads Ash pointed out led around and through the timber stands he
could see from his naked hill.  Most of them were on federal land. Luke
recognized one of the streams they passed.  He had panned out a nugget
the size of a pea there the year he was ten.  He'd never felt that rich
again.

Ash told him to stop near the smoking slash pile.  "A colony of owls
used to live right in here," he said wistfully.  No homes were left for
owls anymore.  A wide area had been cleared to make room for the slash
pile.  Because a pine needle was damned near a volatile oil, debris from
the lumbering sites was piled up in open clearings like this one all
through the dry season.  Cats pushed huge limbs and scrub trees along
with a fair amount of dirt to form giant pyres forty or fifty feet
across and twice a man's height.  Potential bonfires like that made
people edgy.  The last thing anybody wanted was a slash pile being fired
by accident when the woods were dry.  From the way this pile was
smoldering down, he knew Ash was right about when it was fired.  More
than once Ash told him to stop while he studied the trees with those
glasses of his.  Most of the stands he looked at were clean and healthy,
but in some of them red plastic flags fluttered on the trunks, marking
them to be cut for salvage.  But Linden was right.  The lumbering was
going on unchanged from what Luke remembered.  In some clearings, giant
trees had been cut in lengths, ready for the choke setters to set with
cables for the tractors to haul away.  He tried to avoid glancing at the
man in the seat beside him.  It had to be hell for Ash to be trapped in
a rolling chair after spending his life in those woods.

They had lunch in a tavern in Bardenville that had yuppie aspirations
and a salsa cruda that burned straight through the top of Luke's head.
Passing Burt Roberts's place at sunset, Ash pointed at the sign with the
horse on it.  "Burt Roberts's young wife is a noted horsewoman.  Medals
and awards from all over."  Luke was surprised at the tinge of pride in
Ash's voice.  But Ash favored young people, always had, and if that girl
was anything like as young as she looked, he would have some special
indulgence for her.

"She's as pleasant and friendly as she is pretty, too," Ash went on.
Burt's gone a lot, and she comes riding up here on one of those fancy
horses.  She claims to come for honey, but she always stays and visits
like she was lonesome.  She was raised down in San Francisco, the only
child of a San Francisco banker who went into vineyards early. There's
big money behind her.  But she's got an expensive hobby, too. She breeds
Arabians.  I can't figure what she saw in Roberts, but he isn't the
first old head to be turned by a saucy ass.  "He can be pretty flashy on
his own," Luke pointed out.  "I remember pictures from a safari he went
on, Great White Hunter business.  And he always brings in his limit
during deer season."

"Sure," Ash snorted.  "It's real flashy when a man kills for sport what
his neighbor needs for food."

"Well, he isn't exactly ancient," Luke said.  Ash glared at him. "He's
seven years older than Linden, and she's no kid anymore."

The fresh air had been good for Ash.  He sat contentedly staring into
the woods with his binoculars while Luke fed the dog and made sandwiches
from the leftover pot roast and some bread and butter pickles he found
in the fridge.  By the time they finished supper and Luke cleaned up the
mess, Ash's eyes were at halfmast.

Luke started out of the door with a drink to take back to his cabin.
Bandit wagged him out of it.  He sat by the dog on Ash's front steps,
wondering how he was ever going to find the guts to talk to Ash again
about moving off this hill.  When he couldn't answer that question, he
stared at the rental cabin.  Maybe he could locate a couple who would
take the place rent free in barter for what maintenance and work Ash
needed done.

The one thing he couldn't do was leave again with Ash this vulnerable.
Chapter 3

Ancient palm trees jutted from the carefully barbered lawns around the
county courthouse in Featherton.  The building was constructed of rough
gray stone, striated with the high-water marks of a century of floods.

The results of the coroner's inquest were announced.  Tom Harrow had
died of a sharp blow to the head by a blunt instrument, presumed from
the lesion to have been a monkey wrench.  The absence of smoke in his
lungs indicated that he was dead, rather than unconscious, when the car
fell off the jack and the fire started.  The finding was suspicion of
murder.  The county attorney, dapper in gray, conducted the questioning
with brisk disinterest.

But the locals from Madrone were all there.  Eddie Dodge, in a fresh
shirt with his belly tucked inside, drew a line through Luke's name on a
yellow legal pad and motioned him to a seat.  The most formal thing
about the ceremony was that each witness went forward to be sworn in
before telling his story.  The statements ranged from brief to
meandering.  Faces acquired names, some of which Luke vaguely
remembered.

Everyone knew Tom Harrow.  Two women visiting over coffee had seen him
go into the garage about a half hour before the explosion.  Those who
hadn't seen him presumed he was there.

"But you didn't see him go in there?"  the attorney asked.

"Listen," the second woman protested.  "When you hear the thump and
thunder of that rock music shaking the roof wall of that garage, you
know Tom is in there tinkering with that car of his."

The report of a man running off toward the woods behind Maude's Place
came from Rick Boniface, a rangy young man with an open but concerned
expression, who had been saddling a horse when the explosion came.  The
horse had reared on him, but he had caught that glimpse in the very
corner of his eye.  No, he had no idea whether the man was young or old,
but he was moving fast.  As far as that went, it could have been a
woman, for all he knew.  It was somebody wearing pants.

Burt Roberts was called up next.  Roberts looked older in the raw
midafternoon light, less rakish and daring with the smudges of smoke
cleaned from his face.  According to Burt Roberts, he and his wife,
Amie, and Bo Sanders, a forester in his employ, were sitting over lunch
in Maude's when the blast came.  A rancher and his wife and two other
men testified in corroboration.

They'd all been at Maude's, too, and damned near got shook out of their
chairs.

Had any of them left the place at any time?  "I went to the men's room,"
Roberts offered.  "And Amie here," he nodded at his wife, "went out to
the kitchen to ask Maude something."

"She wanted to know what kind of cheese I had put on the burgers," Maude
volunteered from her seat.  The benches creaked as people turned to
stare at her.  "Monterey Jack," she said, crossing her hands on her
stomach and settling back again before the judge got out his request
that she hold her statement until she was called.

"Was Mrs. Roberts still in the kitchen when the blast came?"

Maude nodded.  "We both damn near jumped out of our shoes right there."

"But you were back at your table by then?"  he asked Roberts, who
nodded.

Luke watched Burt Roberts's wife testify, remembering what Ash had said
about her.  She looked young enough.  Luke would have guessed her at
twenty-one.  Ash's description, "a pretty little thing," fell way short
of the mark.  By any man's standard, she was beautiful.  Her features
were delicately defined, good high cheekbones with an angle to her jaws
that gave her face the shape of a heart.  Her luminous skin looked
transparent, and her eyes, raised to the attorney's questions, were
oddly tilted, not really slanted but set differently enough to be
noticeable.  She was wearing a long, full skirt with a loose gauze
blouse that made her appear even more fragile than she had seemed in the
brief glance he had of her the day before.  When she mounted the stand
she corroborated her husband's statement in a low, clear voice that was
devoid of either expression or emotion.  Bo Sanders identified himself
as a forester and assistant to Burt Roberts.

When Sanders's statement, delivered in a low, husky voice, supported the
others, he was sent back to his seat.  Sanders, along with his employer
and wife, were the three best-looking as well as the three best-dressed
people in the room.

Luke snapped from his daydreaming when Silas Engel rose and took the
chair.  He couldn't believe the old man was still around.  Although Ash
always insisted he was harmless, engel had scared Luke to death a
half-dozen times when Luke was a kid.  Engel was forever prowling in the
woods, appearing suddenly like a looming wraith out of the darkness of
the woods.  You never knew where to expect him.  Back then he had always
been searching for a dog somebody had stolen from him.  Now it was a
cow.

Silas Engel had the dust of those ten years on him.  His suspenders
dropped like plumb lines from the curve of his shoulders to his
trousers, hanging free of his shallow chest.  When asked his whereabouts
at the time of the fire, he launched into a catalogue of calumny and
threat, accusing Eddie Dodge of persecuting him, challenging the honesty
and motives of everyone who had made a statement.  He waggled a
cautionary finger at the crowd, threatening revenge for their thievery
and low-down rottenness.  Several times he mentioned a vengeful God and
kept coming back to a cow named Boss that had been stolen away in the
night.  The attorney, flushed with impatience, was finally able to wedge
him, still ranting, out of the chair and back to his seat so he could
call the next witness.

Luke Adams.

Luke carefully recited again what he had done the day of the fire, then
had to repeat it a dozen ways to answer the questions.  He was fighting
to concentrate on what the attorney was asking.  From the moment he took
the chair that faced the room, he had found himself distracted by a
woman on the back row whom he knew he had never seen before.  She was
not the sort of person he would have forgotten.

She was a small, solid woman with wide-set eyes in an unseamed face. Her
hair was a good half-dozen shades of brown in the light streaming in
through a tall, narrow window.  It looked long enough to hang below her
shoulders if she had released it from the knotted bandanna that bound it
back.  Her body looked athletic and deceptively young in jeans and a
faded plaid shirt.  The way she held her lips straight together, folded
in a little on themselves, telegraphed bitter wisdom and pain.  Luke
wouldn't have taken a guess at her age for his life.  But neither could
he look at her without it hurting.  The questions droned on.  "Tell me
again, Luke Adams, how you happened to be passing along the road when
the fire broke out."

"I was on my way to Ash Porter's place."  The attorney consulted a paper
in his hand.  "And you are the boy he informally adopted and raised up
after your mother died up there in his rental cabin?  I believe she
called herself Belle Adams.

"Her name was Isabelle Adams," Luke told him.  What did all this have to
do with arson and murder, if murder was what they were talking about? He
met the man's eyes angrily.

"And where were you coming from?"

"Munich, Germany," Luke told him.  "By way of Baltimore and San
Francisco."

"Saturday you just told the deputy the army.  Luke sighed.  "I am on
leave.  Saturday I was coming in from San Francisco, where I had visited
with Linden Porter, Ash Porter's daughter."  The attorney stared at him
a moment, then told him to step down.  Luke felt eyes watching him pass,
Burt Roberts and Amie, Maude from the cafe', even old Silas Engel of the
lost cow Boss.  Only Bo Sanders didn't look up.  He kept his eyes down,
studying his own hands.

Before her name was even called, Luke realized that the woman on the
back row had to be Nan Harrow.

She walked past him, saying more in the lines of her body than any of
them had managed to express in their rambling statements.  She put her
feet down straight in a line, walking loose from the hip, not cocky, not
even confident, just knowing where she was going and that she was strong
enough to make the trip.

The attorney's mumbled condolences were humiliating.  She nodded
acknowledgment of them, her wideset eyes steady on his face.

Why would anyone force so many questions on a woman who had just lost a
son violently?  She hadn't even been there when it happened.  Yet the
man went on with his tedious flow of questions, some of dubious
relevancy.

Nan Harrow had not seen her son Tom that morning, nor talked to him.

She was not surprised that he was in under the car tinkering, since he
generally spent his free time fooling with the car.

No, she didn't know where he was working during the week.

She knew of no enemy who bore him ill will.  Where was her son Will,
Tom's brother, at the time of the fire and explosion?  "Out of the
state," she replied.

The attorney paused, then gathered courage.  "On what business?'

"His own business, and mine."

"You will forgive me," he pressed on.  "It seems remarkable that your
son did not return at once to be at your side."  She looked at him
levelly.  "What could he do?"  she asked.

He seemed inclined to answer that question, looked at her a moment, and
thought better of it.  "You've been apprised that an examination of your
son's cabin after the fire showed it to have been ransacked?"

At her nod, he went on.  "Do you have any idea what the burglars might
have been after?"

"Tom has never had a bank account that I know of."

"It would be helpful to the law to have an inventory of any valuables
that might have been stolen."

"I can't help you there."

"It has been reported that he often carried expensive photographic
equipment around with him, a costly camera with a collection of lenses
and sometimes a folded tripod.  Do you have any idea where that
equipment is?"

"I haven't known where he kept anything since he moved to his own
place."

The attorney didn't handle frustration well.  His tone became cranky.
"Well," he said.  "According to Deputy Dodge's report, whoever invaded
your son's cabin missed finding his cache.  Deputy Dodge either had
better luck or more time.  Do you have any idea how your son came by
over seven thousand dollars in uncirculated twenty dollar bills?"

Luke watched Nan Harrow as she waited for the murmur in the room to
abate.  The flesh of her face appeared to harden, and her lips went
white along that fold.  Her words were enunciated with immaculate
precision.  "He has talked about buying a new car for a long time."

"Seven thousand dollars?"  the attorney challenged her.

When she only looked at him, he sighed and signaled her to step down.

Ash's house was dark as Luke pulled into the clearing after the inquest.
When Bandit came pounding out to greet him, the light went on inside. As
a kid, Luke had been convinced Ash could see in the dark from the way he
walked silently through the woods at night, watching for birds and
knowing them by name after the light was all gone.

Ash's nap hadn't made him look any fresher.  His eyes looked tired and
his smile of greeting showed effort.  He ordered Luke to draw them both
a Scotch and tell him what had gone on.

He leaned forward, frowning, when Luke got to Nan Harrow's statement.
"How did she look?"  he asked.  "Plumb worn out, I guess.

"I have nothing to compare it with," he told him.  "She seemed very much
in control."

He nodded.  "Nan IS good at control."

"The attorney tried to get Nan Harrow to tell him what business her son
Will was off on."

He grunted.  "I'd wager he didn't get far on that.  Nan is not known for
loose talk, either."  He emptied his glass and handed it to Luke for a
refill.  "So Tom's place had been torn up, 'he said. "Anything said
about a camera?"  Luke looked up in surprise.  "Matter of fact, it was
mentioned.  When the attorney mentioned it, I figured he was trying to
get Nan Harrow to tell him what might be missing from the cabin."

"What did she say?"

"She said she didn't know where he kept the camera or the lenses.
Something special about that camera?"

"That equipment is worth a lot.  I know.  I bought it."

"Was he into photography?"

Ash stirred.  "I started him in it a couple of years ago.  That boy was
a natural artist.  He would come home from sniping or fooling around in
the woods and draw me a picture of some bird he'd seen.  I tell you, he
was talented, like another Audubon.  But he wasn't taken with drawing,
so I got him onto a camera by asking him to start a project for me. I've
mentioned it to you before.  You'll see it and know what I mean about
his being talented.  But that equipment was worth more than anything
else in his cabin.  Or this one."

"Except the money, Luke said.

"Money," Ash repeated.  "How much did you say it was?"

Luke knew darn well Ash had heard the first time, but he was like that.
If you told him something preposterous, he would let it go by and ask
you another time to see if you had the guts to lie twice.  "Seven
thousand dollars in new twenty-dollar bills."

"I guess I need to make some phone calls," he told Luke.  "I bet you'd
like a little time by yourself before supper.  You still like a good
Spanish omelet, don't you?"

Luke grinned.  "My sanity is intact.  Anything around here you need to
have done?"

"There'll be time for that later."

Luke had never found another Spanish omelet that came within a mile of
Ash's.  "How do you manage on groceries?"  he asked.

"I call Ruby and charge," Ash told him.  "The next person passing up
this road drops them off to me.  If you're thinking I can't run my life
from this chair, you're wrong.

When Luke finished clearing up, Ash pulled out a drawer in the library
table.  "I bet you've even forgotten how to play a decent hand of cards.
Let's see you deal."

They played pinochle and Ash won.  Ash hated conversation during cards,
but there were things Luke was curious about.

"This Bo Sanders.  Is he any kin to the Sanders girl

I went to school with, the one who lived up near Bardenville?"

"No chance.  That family spells their name with a u in it.  Anyway, he
was sent down here from Oregon by the company just this past summer. "I
thought Roberts always picked his own men.  "That's the way he likes to
do it.  A man don't invariably get what he likes.  Like, I want to play
cards and you seem to be set on having a social chat."

Luke chuckled and looked down on his loser of a hand.  Ash kept winning
until even he was embarrassed.  Before Luke went off to his cabin, he
promised himself he would replace the fifth of whiskey they had killed.

The dog raised Cain until Luke let him in to sleep on the daybed in the
living room.

Luke groaned and tried to haul himself to his feet.  He didn't know
whether it was Bandit's crazy barking or the pounding at the door that
woke him when there was still only half-light beyond the window.  At the
door, he groaned again.  He was certain that Eddie Dodge wasn't his idea
of how to start a day.

"What's the big idea?"  Luke challenged him.  "I guess you're going to
say you've been here all night."

"I am going to say that, because I was," Luke told him, standing firm in
the door with Bandit losing his mind behind him.  Eddie shouldered past
him anyway to look around the room.  Bandit slid between the two men,
his legs braced and his back hair stiff as a scrub brush.

"Come on, Eddie," Luke said.  "Cut the heroics.  Where else did I have
to go?  Ash and I killed a fifth and I was sleeping it off.  What did
you have in mind?"

"Fire," he said, watching Bandit warily.  His hand jerked a little
toward his hip holster every time the dog growled.  Luke caught Bandit's
ruff and hauled him, whining with complaint, to the door and put him
out.

"Another house was fired last night," Eddie said, relaxing.  "If Rick
Boniface and his family hadn't been sleeping in the woods, they'd have
ended up like Tom Harrow."

Boniface.  He was the young man at the inquest who had been wrestling a
rearing horse and seen the running figure.  "So what has that got to do
with me?"

"When he heard that explosion in his place, he went running.  He got
there in time to see a car pull away, a white car like that one you got
out there."  Luke studied Eddie Dodge.  Had he overestimated this man?
Even though he couldn't stand the guy, he never thought of him as worse
than passing stupid.  "Is that how he described it, Eddie?  A white car
like that one out there?"

The deputy looked at Luke steadily, then stretched his neck a little to
one side.  "Look, Adams.  We were boys together, and now we're men.  We
didn't care much for each other then and we don't have to be buddies
now, but this is damned serious business.  People are dying. You heard
me say Rick hauled his wife and kids out into the woods to sleep. That's
out of fear, Luke.  Fear is dangerous stuff.  Scared folks lose their
heads, go off half-cocked and make big mistakes."

"Okay," Luke conceded.  "I don't think arson and or murder are funny
either.  But neither does it amuse me for you to come flying up here and
rack me out of bed because somebody spotted a white car and that's what
I have rented."

Dodge shook his head, still trying.  "It's not that simple. Boniface
took down that license plate number.  When you get into a sheriff's
uniform, you get access.  The computer tracked down that plate.  It was
on the car rented out to you.

The dog whined and clawed at the outside of the door while Luke put that
together.  "Okay, Eddie.  Either Boniface is lying to you or somebody
took that car of mine off in the night."

"You got the keys?"

"Of course I've got the keys."  He fished for his pants and handed Eddie
the tagged ring out of the pocket.

"You stand here and hand me those keys and then say you didn't take that
car out last night?"

"Come on, Eddie.  You show me a mountain boy who can't hot-wire a car
and I'll change his diapers for him.  I don't get all this.  That garage
fire wasn't the first.  According to Ash, you had this firebug up here
before I came.  Why pick on me?"

"Honest to God, Luke, what do you expect me to do when somebody reports
seeing a car pull away from a bombed house?  I don't know what's going
on here any more than you do.  But Rick Boniface is as level a guy as
you could ask for.  And he took down that number.  A guy whose house is
burning down in the middle of the night doesn't make up license numbers.
What else can I do but follow up on it?  First you turn up in the woods
behind that garage with Tom burning up in it, then your car gets spotted
outside of Boniface's.  How do I know it wasn't you Rick Boniface saw
running at the fire Saturday and you wanted to get rid of a witness?"

Luke shook his head.  Since he was holding the pants, he pulled them on.
"What possible motive would I have, Eddie?"  Luke tried to keep his
voice patient.  "I've been away from this mountain for ten years.  All I
know about what's gone on here is what Ash told me in letters and Linden
caught me up on the other night.  I came back to see how Ash was getting
along, and I came at a bad time."

"You sure as hell did," he said.  "This is the worst I've ever seen it.
Sure, there have always been fires on the mountain, storm fires and an
occasional lit fire when somebody was drunk or mad.  Nothing like this.
Because the papers have been talking feud, the sheriff is on me like a
deer tick.  Where is a guy supposed to look for a feud?  There's always
been a running feud between the little lumber guys and companies like
Larson and Frane.  It's like the thing that goes on between the federal
drug men and the folks that grow hash.  People plant, and the feds come
in and raid.  But that's common hassling, a sort of cat-and-mouse game.

"But when folks start dying, it's past hassling and way past games. The
newspaper people started the feud talk, and they won't let it drop. They
can't name any names, or don't, but they run it anyway, just to make
news.  And to be honest, if I was party to a feud and needed somebody to
come in and fight on my side, you might be one I'd send for, if we was
friends."

Luke stared at him.  Bandit was still scratching and clawing at the
closed door.  Luke didn't mind replacing a fifth of Scotch, but a
paneled door was a bit much.  "You're not suggesting that somebody I'm
tied up with is party to this arson and murder.  There's only Ash, you
know."

When Dodge's hesitation hung on that one moment too long, Luke shook his
head.

Number one: don't blow off at this idiot.  Number two: don't let your
voice give away your disgust at his stupidity.

He spoke on the count of three.  "Okay, Eddie."  He kept the words
coming out slowly.  "You got an old man who is crippled up in a
wheelchair.  He doesn't have chick nor child up here on this mountain,
much less an accomplice to defend him or do his dirty work.  Yet you
want me to believe he's running around pitching Molotov cocktails.  And
what about this business with Jerry Hodges?  Jerry and Ash Porter have
been friends since Jerry and I were kids growing up.  How would his
death fit into this feud theory of yours?"

"Hell, Luke, it's not my theory.  It's just going around.  And things
have been bad up here these past years.  We had two years of drought,
and a lot of people lost good trees.  Then the recession with no work
for anybody and no cash crops to speak of.  A man could brood about that
and decide to take steps against folks he thought had injured him."

"Men in wheelchairs don't take steps."  Dodge flushed.  "I'm trying not
to fight with you, Luke, and I don't mean I necessarily suspect Ash
Porter.  But his name has come up.  He's not a man to measure out words,
and people up here remember what's been said.  You know where Jerry
Hodges was when that truck went sky-high?"

Because Luke didn't know, he waited.  "On the road right at the end of
Ash's drive, that's where.  Ash claims Jerry and him had talked maybe an
hour.  Jerry wasn't more than a few feet down the hill before his rig
blew sky-high."

Luke studied him.  "Why did he park out on the road where anybody could
have come along and fooled with his truck?"

"Old battery.  Ash said that was Jerry's reason to leave the truck out
there on the road, and Hodges's widow Even backed him up."  Dodge
hesitated again.  "Look, Luke, somebody is behind all this, and my job's
on the line to find out who it is.  Ash wasn't charged.  There was just
talk because he's been a bitter man since that accident last spring.
He's done strange things like break off with old friends.  Take Tom
Harrow.  He and that boy used to be thicker'n thieves before this summer
just past."

"Well, I understand that," Luke told him.  "Ash tells me the boy had
turned wild on his mother.  That's not the kind of behavior Ash has ever
put up with.  I know."

Dodge studied him a moment, then shook his head.  "You could be right.
But I'll stick to my guns.  Tom's always been a real pest.  He just got
worse as he got older.  He turned everybody's stomach acting the big
shot this summer.  Anyway, with Ash like he is, and his being the last
man to see Jerry Hodges alive, there's talk.  Look, Adams, I'm leaning
over backwards.  You know I could take you in on suspicion given Rick
Boniface's word alone."  He jerked his head toward the other house. "Ash
can't testify you were out here in this cabin all night.  All I've got
is your word and what comes out of the soil samples I took off that car
out there."

"Hell, Eddie, I drove Ash all over this mountain in that car Sunday. You
could get enough soil samples to set up a laboratory off that thing."

"I'm obliged to have them tested," he said.  "I'm going to file a report
saying you claim somebody must have jumped your car and took it off.  We
can see what reaction that gets.  In the meantime, Luke, for God'S sake,
lie low."

Ash had wheeled to the open door and was eating the dust from Dodge's
car when Luke got over to his place.  "What was that all about?" Ash
asked.

"Oh, you know Eddie Dodge," Luke said, stalling.  The old man was tired
and hung over.  He was still plainly shattered by what had happened to
Nan's boy.  He needed this fresh dose of news real bad.  But even as
Luke used that tone about Eddie, he felt guilty.  Eddie might be dumb,
but clearly he was trying to be fair.  He really could have hauled Luke
in.

"I know Eddie Dodge, and I also know he's the law," Ash replied. "What
was he doing on my place?"

"Rick Boniface's house was fired last night."  Luke went on fast, not
giving Ash any time to respond.  "The family's okay, but Boniface gave
Eddie the license number of my car."

Ash hit his palm with his fist.  "Dammit, Luke, I told you not to come."

What could he say?  "Okay if I start breakfast?"  he asked, passing the
old man to go back to the kitchen.

As Luke pulled the iron skillet off its hook, he heard Ash behind him
blow his breath out in a hard, angry stream.  By the time Luke got the
bacon all laid out to cook, Ash had wheeled into the kitchen and was
setting knives and forks on the table.  His tone was thoughtful.  "If
anyone tinkered with that car last night, Bandit would have raised
hell."

He might as well get it over and take his medicine.  "Bandit slept in
the cabin with me.  Ash slammed the rest of the silverware down hard.

"I told you not to spoil that dog, too."  It felt good to laugh. "Okay,
Ash.  Point made.  I'd be mad, too, if I wasn't so damned confused."

Ash's hands stopped moving, but he didn't look up.  "Eddie got any
theories he'll talk about?"

Luke pulled Ash's own trick back on him, standing with his back to him,
too busy to look around.  "Nothing he hasn't read in the papers," Luke
told him. Chapter 4

More than the heaviness of warm air told Luke that Wednesday would be a
scorcher for this mountain.  At only a little after seven, a faint,
delicate hum was already audible from the colonies of bees just beyond
the cabin doorway.  The bees, their wing shapes blurred from the
rapidity of their movements, hovered, already fanning to lower the
hives' interior temperature.  They were thirsty, too.  The surface of
the wet gravel filling the old truck tire under the gutter drain was
velvety with tumbling yellow masses of bees jostling each other for
drink.

Bandit had kept vigil.  As Luke stepped onto the porch, the dog launched
himself across the clearing, clutching a ragged stick between his teeth.
Luke wrestled it from him and threw it toward the abandoned barn.  The
wood struck the upside-down watering trough with a metal clang.  Luke
winced to remember the dressing-down Ash had given him for turning that
old trough upright just before an autumn rain.

Ash had shouted him out of the house before he had his clothes on. "Come
over here, boy, and look at what you've done."  As Luke looked down in
horror at the dead bees floating on the surface of the trough, Ash had
gone on in a tone of mingled pain and anger.  "These are our bees, and
by taking them on, we take on their protection.  They depend on us.  A
man doesn't lay traps like that for creatures who depend on him."  Under
the cloud of Ash's disapproval, Luke had spilled out the gathered water,
which peppered the barnyard earth with curled golden corpses of drowned
bees.

Ash was already dressed; the smell of coffee fresh in the room.  He
hadn't put on his everyday clothes.  "You're pretty fancy," Luke told
him, watching the old man peer into the tilted oval mirror, his eyes
half closed as he tried to focus over his cheekbones at the loose folds
of a dark spotted tie.

Ash grunted, tugged the knot into line, and looked up at him. "Funeral."

Luke's gut tightened involuntarily.  Tom Harrow.  The boy had died on
Saturday.  Five days had passed.  He glanced at the Seth Thomas clock
above Ash's bookshelf.  "Maybe I better go back and dress again."

Ash shook his head.  "You've no call to go."  Luke stared at him. This
was ridiculous.  If nothing else, the old man needed to be driven down
to the church.  "I feel the call," he told him.

Luke's headshake was firm.  "I weighed it this way and that.  You came
as a stranger to that boy and never knew him in life.  There'll be
enough folks pretending grief at that funeral without your adding to
it."

"You don't make much of a case for that boy."  He shrugged.  "The old
gets points when they die.  Their years smudge over how they started
out, so that folks only recall the man they last knew, not the wild,
whipping twig he once was.  Tom couldn't have picked a worse time to
die."

"Was I a wild whipping twig?"  Luke asked, charmed as always by the way
Ash likened trees to men and men to trees.

"Not like Tom."  He scowled at Luke.  "Not that you were any treat to
raise, mind you, but nothing like that Tom.  He hadn't been on this hill
more than six months before he had put a chip on half the shoulders on
this mountain."

"You said they came four years ago.  What was he then, about thirteen?"

Ash nodded.  "But give Tom fair; he was bored.  Coming out of the city,
he was used to more going on.  This mountain might have been a cage for
the way he prowled, always underfoot, always where he didn't need to be.
That was how he crossed Burt Roberts in the beginning.  Tom went for
gold along the streams running past the company's operation until
Roberts finally threatened the kid to stay off or take the
consequences."

"For safety's sake, I guess," Luke mused.  "Did I tell you I've had
grosbeaks around here all summer?"  Luke asked.  Luke didn't remember
the old man's habit of changing subjects abruptly without warning. Maybe
that had come in the years he'd been away.

"Grosbeaks?"

"You know, the ones with the big, thick bills for cracking seeds," Ash
explained.  "They aren't rare here, but I've never seen them in such
numbers.  They still don't even have a suspect in Tom's murder.  They
told me when they called about the funeral."

Luke didn't envy Eddie Dodge his badge on this one.  Everybody in that
village had known that boy was in that garage that afternoon.  "So how
are you going to get down the mountain

if I don't take you to the funeral?"  Luke asked him.  "I got along
before you came back," Ash reminded him.  "Just like I'm going to get
along after you leave.  I got friends, and one is coming by."  He
wheeled briskly to the kitchen.  "If you stick in some more toast, I'll
open fresh honey."

Luke looked after him.  He had blown that one.  Ash was just waiting for
him to challenge his ability to take care of himself again. "There was
honey left in the jar from yesterday," Luke told him.

"It's gone now.  I stirred it into hot milk to get myself to sleep."

"There's a fresh bottle of whiskey up there," Luke told him.

Ash grinned, his blue eyes suddenly sparkling.  "I put some of that in,
too.  Mead, they call it."

"Yeah, mead."  The honey coiled from the spiraled wooden dipper to fan
swiftly on the hot toast.  "Am I kidding myself, or is this bottle
late-summer honey?"

Ash failed to conceal his delight.  "Either you're bluffing or you ve
kept your old palate.  This is from blackberry blooming."

"You don't taste the like of this in a mess hall," Luke told him.
"Speaking of the army, one thing about it.  A man loses the knack of
doing nothing."

"You asking what I want done around here?"  Luke laughed. "Something
like that."

"Work's as common as thieves.  Pick what you fancy.  There's always room
in the woodbox, and brush to trim back."

"When were the bees last checked?"  Ash sighed.  "Will meant to get to
it, but he took off too fast on this last trip of his.  We could take a
couple of supers off the old hives anytime."

Another word he hadn't heard used that way since he left the mountain.
The hives in spring sat low, boasting only the brood chamber and a
single box above for honey storage.  As the bees harvested the summer
blooming, additional boxes, or supers, were added until each hive became
a square wooden tower stacked up from its base.

Bandit had thundered off the porch to threaten a blue sedan inching down
the drive toward the house.  Ash shoved himself back from the table.
"Evie's early.  You might fire up the pot again."

"Evie who?"  Luke asked as he scraped to his feet.  "Hodges," Ash called
over his shoulder.  "Make like you remember her, even if you don't."

Luke didn't remember Jerry Hodges's wife Evelyn.  Jerry hadn't even
married yet when Luke left the mountain.  But she was a nice-looking
girl with an apple forehead that gleamed from the same warmth that had
set the bees to early fanning.  Her eyes looked deeply set, but that
could be an optical illusion.  He recognized the faint discoloration
around her dark eyes as being the penalty of tears.  She caught his hand
briefly, then sank into a chair.

"You're early," Ash said.  "There's time for coffee."  She nodded. "I'd
love it.  I didn't have the heart this morning myself."

"You sure you want to go through with this?"  Ash asked.  Luke, feeling
intrusive, deliberately clattered getting a fresh cup down for her.  Her
face was square with deep dimples that were painfully frivolous under
the expression in her eyes.  Looking at her brought Jerry Hodges, vital,
deep-chested, and smiling, full into Luke's mind. He didn't hear her
answer, but the dimples tightened up at him in a half smile as he handed
her the coffee.

"This is a mighty poor homecoming for you, Luke," she said.  "How long
can you stay here with Ash?"

No one had asked before.  "I have a full month,"

he told her.  "That's a long time.  I figured on knowing when my welcome
was wearing out."

Ash grunted.  "That'll be when the work's caught up.  Any word of Will
Harrow, Evie?"

She shook her head.  "There's word he isn't going to make it to the
funeral."

"Good Lord," Ash exploded.  "What's into that boy?  Doesn't he know Nan
needs him?"

"Nan's talked to him.  If she wanted him here, you know he'd come." Her
voice turned harsh.  "Anyway, you know better than that, Ash. Funerals
are for show, just ostrich dances folks have to go through with. Nothing
helps.  Nothing."

When Ash leaned to touch her free hand, she caught at it desperately.
"Maybe it will help when they get who's doing this."

"Foul play, person or persons unknown?"  she asked, her voice tight with
bitterness.  "It's a good thing I'm not a betting woman.  I might put
our homestead up against Tom's murderer or Jerry's ever being brought to
account."  The woodbox was first.  Stripped to the waist, Luke hefted a
log from the pile beside the chopping stump.  Something swifter than his
eye rustled and stirred a path under the matted leaves. Above him a
scrub jay screamed, rocking with the force of his protest. Home.

His old chopping rhythm was hard to find, but when the first log split,
filling the air with the rich scent of pitch, Luke grinned to himself
and settled to the job.  He had worked up a sweat by the time he got the
woodbox filled.  He stood and stretched to stand eye level with an
upside-down lizard poised on minute claws, the fold of skin across its
papery throat throbbing frantically.  With a flick of its tongue, it
spiraled out of view.  Since the brush didn't need cutting back, Luke
considered the bees.  The colonies had been moved closer to the cabin.
Of course, that was to take advantage of what shade was left.  Hot bees
swarm.  Did he dare approach them after all this time?

Ash's equipment was stored, as always, in the pitchroofed shed that
served as a back porch.  Luke had lit the smoker before he remembered
that the smell of human sweat was almost as exciting to the bees as
their own venom.  He put the smoker out, showered, and heated the last
of the coffee to read up on what he was tackling.  Ten years was a long
time.

Ash's bible on bees was by Root.  First copyright, 1877.  A dusty
plastic kitchen bag lay beside it.  Luke opened the bag and examined the
syringe and medicine bottle thoughtfully.  What in hell was this?  The
label on the bottle had curled away.  Straightened, it identified a
drugstore in Bardenville and the physician's name, Meyers.

Ash and Evelyn Hodges had been gone two hours.  Luke replaced the book
on the shelf and found Dr. Meyers's name in the directory.  "He's just
in from Tom Harrow's funeral," the woman told him.  "Hold a minute."  So
what was he going to say?

"This is Ash Porter's son," he began.  "I'm home on leave."

"Of course."  The voice was hearty.  "Just saw Ash a few minutes ago.
Got a problem?"

"I'm not sure," Luke admitted.  "He's not much for talking about his
health, but I ran across a syringe and a bottle of something here and
wondered what that was about."

"On that table of his, I hope," the doctor interrupted.

"Not exactly," Luke told him.  "Up on a bookshelf."

"That old fool.  Yell at him, I have.  He's so sensitized to bee stings
that I'm not sure anything could save him if he tangled with those pets
of his.  That prescription inight give him enough borrowed time to phone
for help."

"That bad?"

"You bet your life.  Bee venom isn't anything to fool around with if
you're inoculated.  The smart thing would be to get those colonies off
that land.  Actually, the really smart thing would be for him to move
off that hill into town, where he would have people around to give him a
hand when he needed it."

"That's what I came home to do," Luke admitted.  "So far, I might as
well have saved the fare."

"My sympathy.  I've tried to tell Ash things he didn't want to hear.  I
know what you're facing.  But you could do him the favor of bolting the
syringe and medicine to that chair of his."  Instead, Luke blew the dust
off the plastic bag and set it on Ash's table.  Lifting the binoculars,
he trained them beyond the window to the clearing beyond.  A single bee,
caught in his focus, exploded into a giant with bubbled eyes and richly
laden legs.  The farther view was one of regal dimension.  The smoke was
still rising from the burning stash pile, but it fanned out just above
the treetops, pressed down by the hot, wet air. No wonder Ash had wanted
to drive the backroads.  The view from his window commanded a world: the
glint of a stream in the sun, the truncated curl of a road and the
forest, brightened here and there by the fluttering plastic ribbons of
the foresters.

When Bandit set up his alarm, Luke laid the binoculars down.  From the
porch he watched Evelyn Hodges's nervous shepherding of her blue sedan
down the drive.

Evie refused Ash's invitation to come in for coffee or a drink.  "I make
it a practice to do two impossible things every day," she told him.
"It's time to get the second one over with."

Ash nodded and thanked her again.  He motioned Luke to wait until she
had backed the car around and disappeared behind the curve in the drive.

"You people are all cryptic," Luke told him, following the awkward
passage of Ash's chair over rough ground.

"If cryptic means we don't mouth things the other guy already knows, I
guess we are.

"I guess the second hard thing is going back to that house without
Jerry," Luke said.  "But what.  was the first?"

Ash's tone was impatient.  "How about leaving a house to face curiosity
and pity where you used to see envy?"

"Envy?"  Luke asked.

"Good God, Luke, Jerry Hodges was a man, a real man, and those two had a
marriage, a real marriage.  You gonna tell me that's not rare where you
been?"

The question must have been rhetorical, because Ash didn't wait for an
answer.  Or maybe mountain people didn't wait for answers they already
knew either.  Ash was through the house and into the kitchen, peering
into the refrigerator and then banging the cupboard doors.  "You need to
make a run to the store," he told Luke.  "Nan Harrow's coming to have
supper with us."

"How come?"

"I asked her."

"Now, come on, Ash.  I may have forgotten a lot, but I remember
funerals.  People coming piling into the house carrying every kind of
cake known to woman, and hams, and keeping salads..

"Nan made it plain she wasn't going back home.  There was food at the
church, but she wouldn't carry any away.

"This isn't making any sense to me.  Why isn't she going back home?"

"She'll go home, all right.  I figure she was just trying to keep that
army of neighbors from trooping through there, invading her space. Nan
requires a lot of space.  If Ruby down at the store has a chicken that
doesn't have those big nasty tumors of yellow fat hanging in under the
skin, bring a good-sized one.  Something green for a salad and a bag of
those cashews.  And wine.  Red wine."

"Red?"

"Nan likes a good, strong red.  Maybe Zinfandel.  Check where it's from.
The Sonoma Valley is fine."

If Ruby at the general store recognized him, she didn't indicate it when
he went in.  But when he asked to examine the second chicken, she laid
it out on waxed paper on the meat case and snorted.  "Nobody's as picky
about chickens as that Ash Porter."

While she added up the tab, Luke studied the candy display.  The penny
candy was all a nickel now except for the licorice whips, which were
three for a dime.  As he handed her the money he noticed she had set two
cans of condensed chicken broth beside the things he'd asked for.

"Ash will need the broth for that rice he fixes with nuts," she told
him, catching his glance.  "He always forgets, and somebody makes
another trip."

Luke chuckled.  "You're way ahead of me.  I didn't have any idea what he
wanted these things for."

"Maybe we know each other too well up here.  I know women who'd give a
pretty penny to cook as good as Ash Porter does, myself among them.  You
must have taken up wine off in the army.  Ash sticks with his Scotch."

Luke almost blurted out that the wine was for Nan Harrow.  He caught
himself in time.  She looked up at him as she fitted the bills under the
metal prong in the cash register.  "You didn't go to Tom Harrow's
funeral."

"I didn't know the boy."

She slammed the door shut and reached in the back of the candy case.  "I
used to think I did.  But this past summer I haven't been so sure. Eddie
Dodge had said Luke's timing was off, and Ruby was saying the same
thing.  To listen to Ash, the kid had been a problem from the first.

Ruby laid a red jawbreaker on the counter in front of him and grinned.
"But I remember you."  How could she remember one kid's taste after all
that time?  At his gesture, she shook her head.  "My treat. You don't
know how happy Ash's friends all were to see you come up here. It would
be nice if you could talk some sense into him.  But even lacking that,
it's good knowing somebody gives a damn about Ash."

She read his thought and shook her head.  "Having nobody but that Linden
is worse than having nobody at all."  The aroma of Ash's meal cooking
was enough to drive a man crazy for food.  He had needed the chicken
broth to cover the sauteed onions and rice.  The sun was wholly gone,
leaving a vague fused brilliance that turned the treetops into spiny
silhouettes.  Bandit made a sound in his throat, a deep, hungry sound
without threat, as he thundered off the porch to disappear into the
trees beyond the cabin.

"That's Nan coming," Ash said.  "Bandit always hears her before I do.
You might go meet her," he added.

"Good God, I've never met the woman.  Ash stiffened to stare at him.
"She's our guest."  Luke's eyes took a moment to adjust after the
brightness of Ash's kitchen.  He followed the direction Bandit had taken
along a rough path that led off behind the cabin.  Nan Harrow and Bandit
came into view almost at once, the small, solid woman with the shaggy
dog keeping step under her hand.  She was in jeans with low, rough
boots.  The plaid flannel collar of her shirt was almost buried by her
loose, shoulder-length hair.  He would have known her by the walk, very
straight and light but purposeful.  She paused when she saw him.  Her
face changed into something that was less than a smile, maybe a
recognition.  "Ash sent you out to meet me.  At his nod, she glanced up
at him.  "Once a father, always a father."  Her hand was small, broad,
and a little rough in his own.  "I've looked forward to meeting you,
Luke Adams.  God knows I've heard enough about you.

"Those are always terrifying words," he said.  "Look, Mrs. Harrow.

"Nan," she corrected him.

"Nan," he repeated.  "About today.  She shook her head.  "Don't say it
for me, Luke.  If you need to say it for yourself, go ahead.  But I
understand."

He hadn't known the difference until she defined it.

"I need it for myself," he said.  "I'm sorry.  She nodded formally and
began walking again.  After a moment she looked up at him, her eyes
studious on his.  "If you don't mind, let's try to keep Ash from talking
about the funeral.  He needs to get his mind off it."

"What about you?"  he blurted.

She stared at him.  "He didn't say anything about what happened there at
the cemetery?"

"He sent me off for groceries.  What happened?"  She stopped and looked
down, stubbing the toe of her boot in that dark fan of earth where the
drainage from the bee's water kept the dirt spongy and damp. "There was
talk about who did it, and the robbery motive.  Burt Roberts asked if
Tom's camera had been found."  She tightened her shoulders and started
on.  "Sheriff Dodge shook his head and said something about a camera
being nothing, that it was money the thieves were after.  Roberts
argued, saying a seven-hundred-dollar camera was enough to tempt many a
man to robbery."

She didn't need to say the rest, and Luke didn't want to hear it.
Roberts was the same as accusing Ash Porter of causing the boy's death.

"Nan," he said, having a sudden problem with his voice.  "Listen, Nan...

She shook her head.  "That's why I promised to come tonight, so Ash
would know I knew better."  She looked toward the porch, where Ash
waited in the door, impatience in every line of his body.  She left
Luke's side and went swiftly up the stairs.  When she leaned to press
her face against Ash's, his hands caught her shoulders with a clawing
desperation.  Bandit circled, whining with frustration.  Luke caught his
ruff and tugged it hard, something like envy sour in his mouth. Chapter
5

At first Luke was inclined to credit the Strangeness of that evening to
the Zinfandel.  Ruby at the general store had guessed wrong. Except for
a few disillusioning experiments in Europe, Luke had remained, perhaps
in an unconscious aping of Ash Porter, strictly a whiskey man.

Before tackling the salad, Ash set out sturdy glasses with ridges down
the sides.  By the time Luke had opened the wine, Nan had solemnly
arranged the hot dishes on Ash's table, civilized for the event by a
cloth spattered with pale-blue daisies.  Luke recognized the entree as a
bastard coq all vin, ruddy onions nudging the wine-flavored chicken off
its bones in a dark sea of fragrant sauce.  The rice would have been
meal enough alone, dense and moist, studded with a crisp astonishment of
cashews.

Nan's hands were childish, short and broad with nails cut straight
across, as if making a statement.  She lifted her glass the same way she
walked, purposefully, folding her fingers solidly around its thickness.
She idly traced the ridges in the glass even when she wasn't holding it,
even when she caught Ash's eyes and held them, forcing his conversation
away from the day just past with a tactful stubbornness that amazed
Luke.

Less than a week before, Luke had watched Linden's slender fingers
careful on the stem of a goblet.  The wine had been very pale, not so
much white as greenish in tone, as fragile and gleaming as the crystal
it swirled in.  Linden had ordered the wine with frowning care, then
nodded to have his glass served.  And he hadn't drunk it.  In retrospect
that had seemed churlish.

Watching Nan across the narrow table, he felt better about that
decision.  Damnit, he had contacted Linden assuming in confidence she
would be, in spite of the rupture between them, as concerned as he was
to make Ash both safe and happy.  To realize that she didn't care about
either of those things was still an astonishment.  The memory of those
dark eyes closed against him still rankled.  Nan was as natural as
Linden had been mannered and aloof, as giving as Linden had been
self-protective.

Even with Nan's attention fixed intently on Ash, Luke drank eagerly of
the same wine that had left a faint line on the down of her upper lip.
Her determined efforts to avoid discussing the unpleasantness at her
son's funeral were thwarted in the end by Ash.  "A lot of nerve that
Burt Roberts has," Ash said, his voice risIng.

"He's not worth your anger," Nan told him.  "He's old enough to know
better," Ash fumed, ignoring her.  "Coming to the church tricked out
like a parade horse, damn near burying that coffin in flowers, and then
starting that business about the camera.  You'd think he'd have more to
do than come to a funeral just to raise a fuss about another man's
business."

"No one pays any heed to Burt Roberts," she said.  "Let me pass you
something.  Salad?  Chicken?"

"Look who's passing," Ash grumped.  "You've only pushed your food
around.  You best eat up yourself, or I'll make you take it home."

"Be careful, or I'll let you," she said, her mouth tightening toward a
smile.  "And I might take yours, too, if you don't clean your plate."

Tom's name was not spoken.  Neither was Will's.  An anger swelled in
Luke that this Will Harrow, this paragon Ash had bragged about, lacked
the common decency to be at his mother's side.

As if he had summoned her thought, Nan turned to him.  "I'm glad you are
here," she said.  "I told him to stay away, that it wasn't a good time,"
Ash put in.

"You've been wrong before."

"And so have you, young lady.  And you're being wrong again if you think
I'm going to let you go back through those woods to that empty cabin.
Who knows what half-crazed man might see your shadow pass and fire
willy-nilly?  I have it all figured out.  Luke here will bunk in the
spare room and you use his place."

She shook her head and glanced at the Seth Thomas.  "You know better
than that, Ash Porter.  And it's time I took off."

"At least let Luke drive you," he insisted.  She looked at Luke again,
squarely.  The warmth of the room had brought color to her cheeks, and
her eyes, framed by dark lashes, were speculative. "California drinking
laws are downright punitive," she announced.

"Good Lord, woman, Ash exploded with irritation.  "Are you saying I
raised up a boy that can't handle a few miles of mountain road with
nothing but a glass of festered grape juice in his belly?  I take that
personally."

She chuckled deep in her throat and touched his hand with hers.
"Festered grape juice, is it?  You're lucky I don't take it home with
leftovers."

"Be my guest," he said.  "Luke, packaged up some dinner and put in some
of the apples off the porch.

God only knows when this woman's had wit enough to lay in supplies."
Luke heard them talking quietly while he followed Ash's directions. When
he returned, Nan had risen and was waiting for him. With the mountain
road still to drive, Luke hoped the strangeness was not all Zinfandel.
He had the distinct feeling that much had passed between Ash and Nan in
those few minutes of his absence.  Ash's expression was suspiciously
innocent, and Nan seemed relieved of more than what had swelled the
empty knapsack she lifted off the chair.

"Now, you be careful," Ash called after him.  "All Eddie Dodge needs on
you is a DUI."

She must have made some conversation on that trip to her cabin, which
lay a mile or so north of Ash's place.  For the life of him, Luke
couldn't remember what they talked about.  It had to be the wine that
made him conscious of her in the seat beside him that his mind could
absorb nothing more.  When she told him where to stop, he was suddenly
infected with Ash's paranoia.  "I'll just carry these things inside for
you and see that everything's all right."

The suggestion startled her into swift refusal.  "No.  You mustn't do
that.  It's fine.  I'll be fine."

"At least let me carry them to the door for you."  She had the food
containers in her hands, the sack of apples under her arm, and was out
of the car in a wink.  "Really, Luke.  It's fine."

"Well."  He turned firm.  "I'm not leaving until you get a light on and
wave me from the door that it's okay."

"You are Ash's son," she said, a smile in her voice.  "I will see you
again?"  he asked, struck by an unreasonable panic.

"Of course!  Now, good night, and thank you.  Her silhouette against the
lighted doorway looked small and painfully vulnerable.  Too swiftly it
diminished and then vanished as the door swung shut.  He cursed as he
backed out and turned to drive home.  Ash, with Bandit under his hand,
called from the dark of the porch as Luke got out of the car.  His pipe
glowed and dimmed rhythmically as Luke approached. "Don't tell me you've
cleaned up that dinner mess already."

"Very well, I won't," Ash replied.  "You know she's seven years older
than you if she's a day."

Luke stiffened against the words.  "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, hell, Luke.  I'm crippled, not blind.  It must be a long time
between women for you to go down that hard."

As a man Luke had spent too much time with strangers to remember how
transparent he was to Ash.  And he had also been spoiled by having other
people keep their mouths off his private business.  Bands of muscle
tightened along his throat, altering the timbre of his voice. "Listen,
Ash," he began.  His anger was as transient as it was swift. What was
the use?  "It's a long time for any man between women like that one."

When the bowl of the pipe only continued to pulse with sporadic light,
Luke challenged the silence.  "No answer to that, have you?"

Ash wheeled to the edge of the porch, braced his chair against the post,
and knocked his pipe out onto the stone slab beside the ramp. Pricks of
light winked and died among the tobacco ash.  His wheels creaked a
complaint from the wooden porch as he turned toward the door. "Tomorrow
we better work the bees before some other damned thing happens."

The mystery of Nan's empty knapsack was partially solved over breakfast
coffee.  "I need a hiding place," Ash told Luke.  "Not deep, but twelve
inches, maybe, by about ten across.

71

When Luke glanced around the room, Ash shook his head.  "Outside," he
said.  "This place is no more fire-safe than the next one."

"You must have a bank box," Luke said.  "Hell yes, I've got a bank box,
and you're signed on it in case that ever comes up.

"How can that be?  I never signed anything."

"I did," Ash said, his tone heavy with Irritation.  "What I want hid has
to be buried, and somebody beside me has to know where it is."

Luke sighed.  "You know this place better than I do anymore.

Ash nodded and launched into what at first seemed to be one of his
spectacular non sequiturs.  "The thing about the bees is that folks
generally are terrified of them.  Maybe you could dig me a hole between
the hives.  The ground's friable there from cultivation to keep the
weeds and grass down."

"Ash," Luke protested.  "There's the barn and the other cabin."

"All made of pure asbestos, I guess?"  Ash asked.  It was damned awkward
to wield a shovel in full bee-tending gear.  Luke's sweat rose under the
heavy veiling of the bonnet, coursing in rivulets behind his ears and
down his chest.  Ash's Wellington knee-high boots were a conspiracy
against bending to the weight of a loaded shovel.  When the hole looked
deep enough and the right size, he straightened painfully and went up to
the house.  "Now what?"

Ash, who had watched from inside the screen door in case the bees took
umbrage, handed Luke a package wrapped in oiled paper and tied with a
cord that had plainly seen service as a wash line.  Ash's phone was
ringing as Luke set off across the clearing to bury the bundle and stamp
down the dry earth above it.

The phone call was the first of several.  There'd been a lot of talk
down at Maude's Place about the Boniface family's being farmed out here
and there, without even a change of clothes to their backs.  Maude was
half hosting a money-raiser.  The beer would be at cost, and she was
throwing in a pig to barbecue on the spit out back.  "Somebody's
bringing venison chili," Ash reported.  "It's a buck a head plus
whatever you can afford for the pot.  And live music thrown in."

"How much money can they expect to raise that way?"  Luke asked. The
mountain economy he remembered had run more on barter than bucks.

"More than they'll have without it," Ash replied.  As he spoke he
wheeled to the kitchen and hefted a stew pot off the shelf.  "I told
Evie I'd put together baked beans for twenty or so.

"I'm not staying home this time," Luke told him.  Ash turned, studied
him a moment, and then laughed.  "Does that ever sound like the old
days!  Cut it out and go check the bees.  You're overage in grade to
sulk."

Luke felt his pulse quickening as he inserted the hive tool and lifted
the top cover from the end hive.  A man should handle bees all the time
or stay away from them.  He was as timid as he had been the first time
he tried this process with Ash watching silently from a distance.  He
studied the bees running around over the space over the frames until he
spotted the dark, slender queen.  To his relief, she scrambled back into
the hive.

Whoever had been keeping these bees knew his business.  Slowly and
methodically he inspected the frames, brushed the bees from the top
storage box, lifted it off, and replaced the cover.  When he turned with
his smoker to approach the second hive he saw Nan Harrow watching him
from the edge of the woods.  She smiled silently and circled the cabin
from the back to find a devious path toward Ash's door.  Watching her
go, he wanted to follow her as much as he wanted to stay away from her
and Ash together.  Thanks to Ash's infernal candor, it would push him to
be natural with her now in the old man's company.  And Ash was the one
who had blown up about Burt Roberts's talking about other men's
business!

To his relief, she stayed.  When he had set the honey frames in the bee
room and stripped off his gear, he found Nan and Ash studying a list at
Ash's table.

"We need supplies," Ash said as Luke entered.  "Nan wants some stuff of
her own, if you don't mind her going along."

Luke nodded, avoiding Ash's eyes.  "Fine.  What about the honey?"

"Will rigged my extractor so I can run it from this chair," Ash told
him.  "I can get the most of it worked before you two get back." Luke
groaned to himself.  How was he going to rock a man loose who was this
carefully and firmly entrenched?  Ash handed him the list with a wad of
folded bills.  "Who knows?  I might even get a nap in."

In the sunlight Luke noticed again what had struck him that day of the
inquest.  Nan's hair was at least three different shades of gold to
brown, as if the sun had claimed what it touched and fought for more.
She sat angled a little in the seat to talk to him, her eyes thoughtful
on his face.  "This is not much of a holiday for you."

"I'm not complaining yet."

She nodded.  "I really am glad you came.  You can't imagine how much
Will and I have worried about his safety up here alone.  Not only that,
but I think Ash gets lonely.  He likes people around."

"He told me how good you and your son were to him after his accident.
You have my thanks for that, you know."  When she nodded instead of
speaking, he was disappointed.  "What really happened in that accident,
Nan?  Linden told me the truck was at high speed and a stray bullet got
the windshield.  The part that didn't hang together was what the driver
did afterward.  Linden said he threw a big fit down at Maude's and then
just took off.  Those were her words."

Nan's eyes were on him, but her mind was clearly somewhere else. "It's
interesting to hear the story told that way.  As for speed, they all go
fast.  That's how they make their living.  As for Ford throwing a big
fit at Maude's, it seemed like more than that.  The man was on fire with
anger and pain.  It was May, you know, and something was going on down
at the high school.  My boys and I had stopped in to eat before we
dropped Tom off at his school for the evening.

"I hadn't heard anything about any accident until Ford lunged through
those double doors.  He staggered straight to the bar and started
pouring it down.  Right away a bunch of men gathered around.  I still
didn't know it was Ash he hit: I didn't find that out until late that
night.  But Ford was out of control, shouting, crying, threatening,
clearly hysterical.  He kept going back to that windshield shattering
right in his face.  'I'll get the bastard that fired that bullet at me.
I know where I was and where he had to be.  I'll get that bastard if
it's the last thing I do.'

"Then it was just Ash's bad luck to be on that road."

"More than a combination of bad luck and fixed routine.  The accident
happened about four in the afternoon, the same time Ash always set out
for Maude's Place to sit and jaw with his friends."

"What did he do then, just walk out and disappear?"  She nodded. "That
would have surprised me more if I hadn't seen how badly he was blown
away by what happened.  I figured the company would settle him down, get
him to a doctor for tranquilizers or something.  As the boys and I were
leaving in our car, one of the company men was walking him out, talking
a mile a minute and tugging him along.  He was quieter already, at least
listening."

"Was that Roberts?"

She shook her head.  "It was his assistant, the man Bo Sanders replaced.
There was a lot of talk about how Eddie Dodge should have held Ford that
night, but nobody thought of that until they found out he was gone." She
glanced up.  "I didn't know the man at all.  He was somebody Roberts
brought in from outside.  But I still feel bad when I think about him
going off like that carrying all kinds of guilt.  The worst was that he
and Ash had been halfway friends.  He used to pull in and drink coffee
with Ash and sometimes buy a jar of honey.  I figured he couldn't stand
to hang around and see Ash messed up like he was."

After working their way down both Ash's list and hers, they had coffee
and a sandwich in town.  "Surely you don't manage that mountain without
a car?"  Luke asked her.

She smiled.  "It can't be done.  Will's using mine.  That's why I
appreciate your hauling me around so much."

What prevented him from asking where in hell Will was?  For one thing,
he never got the chance.  She was even more expert than Ash at changing
the subject without warning.  She leaned back in her chair and looked at
him.  "When I lived in that cabin I thought a lot about your mother."
Luke looked up, startled.  Nan couldn't possibly have known his mother.

"From what Ash said, we had a lot in common, your mother and me," she
went on.  "Both of us coming up there to have a good place to watch over
our kids.  I was just luckier than she was.

"I don't remember her," Luke said.  "Nor my father, either."

She nodded.  "My kids don't remember their dad.  He was killed in a
construction accident the year after Tom was born.  Will was going on
four."

"When I was a kid I used to wonder what happened to Linden's mother,"
Luke told her.  "For some reason I was scared to ask."

"She left Ash," Nan said, her voice suddenly taking on a harsh edge.
"Just up and left him, with Linden only a toddler."  She shook her head.
"I still see women do that and I shrink for my sex.  It's too unnatural
for me to understand.  A mother watches over her kids, the pause was
minute, "as long as she can."

It was his turn to change the subject, and he managed it somehow.
Damnit, Ash was too simplistic.  Just because you found a woman
fascinating didn't mean you were getting involved with her.  But Nan did
fascinate him.  He wanted her to talk, to move, to eat, to breathe with
that swift intake of air she did just before she spoke.  He wanted to
keep her talking until she had no more secrets from him behind that
unlined forehead that glistened a little from the heat.  Just being
interested didn't mean what Ash had implied in his scathing comment.  He
didn't realize he was saying the words until they were out.  "You are
not an ordinary woman, Nan Harrow," he told her.

She flattened her square hand on the table and made that straight line
with her mouth.  "And I wouldn't call you an ordinary man, Luke Adams."
The mock formality of her tone lightened the words.

"You don't know me.

"I know the Luke Adams Ash talks about.  Then I know the one I see. That
has to be at least a half rounded view of you.  I'll gamble on the
rest."

They were halfway back up the mountain when they saw the plume of smoke
rising on the slope above them.

Nan inhaled sharply and groped for Luke's arm.  "Oh, my God," she
breathed.

He closed his hand over hers.  "Hey, hey.  It could be nothing."

She drew her hand away at once and Sat tensely beside him as he gave the
car all the gas he dared.  Since the smoke still rose north of Madrone,
he turned in toward the town.  A woman stood in front of Maude's staring
at the smoke.

"What's on fire?"  Luke asked.

The woman turned, looked at him, and then at Nan in the car.  "A
stable," she told him.  "It was empty, thank God, not even any horses."

"Anybody know what started it?"

"Like they'll ever know," she replied, turning away to stare again. "A
stable?"  Nan echoed.  "They're sure?"  She was coiled tightly in the
seat with both hands pressed against her face, her body trembling
wildly.  "They're sure?"  she repeated in a tone that edged toward
hysteria.

He slid in beside her and caught her shoulder.  "Nan," he pleaded.
"There was nobody in it; nobody died.  There weren't even horses."

She slid her hands down to stare at him with her eyes streaming. He
could see her muscles relax even though the trembling was slow to pass.
"I'm sorry I flew out like that.  I can't think what got into me.

"It's not like you have been under a strain, or anything like that," he
said, backing the car around.

Her tone was almost amused.  "There for a minute you even sounded like
Ash Porter."

That time Nan at least let him carry half the grocery sacks to her door
while she hauled the others.  "You have a big appetite for a little
woman," he teased her.  She flushed, set down the grocery bags, and
turned to him with her back against the closed door.

"Thanks again, Luke."  Then, with one of those swift turns of mood he
was just learning, her face puckered in annoyance.  "Listen to me.
That's all I say anymore.  Thanks, Luke.  Thanks, Luke.  You don't owe
me anything, Luke Adams.  You haven't any call to do one thing after
another for a practical stranger.  How come you're doing all this?"

When the truth can't be said, try kidding.  "Maybe I was just raised up
right."  She spoke slowly.  "I don't think that's all, Luke Adams," she
said quietly.  "But don't do that to yourself.  Ash was right; you
shouldn't have come up here.  This is not over, Luke.  It's not even
half over."

"It's too late.  I'm here.  On both counts it's too late."  Her tears
began again swiftly, and she covered her face with her hands as she had
earlier.  He took her in his arms hard, not so much holding her as
bracing her against that awful trembling that racked her whole frame.
Her body felt as solid as it looked, with firm, rounded muscle tone. Her
hair smelled like pine.  She didn't pull free, but the trembling stopped
almost at once.  She stood there in the shelter of his arms without
moving.  When she finally stirred, she looked up at him and wiped her
cheeks with the backs of both hands.  "It was seeing that fire," she
said, her voice distorted by tears.  "But it's okay now.

Then her lips drew tight again.  "If you think I am going to say Thank
you, Luke one more time, you're crazy. She stretched and touched his
mouth with the faintest brush of her lips.  "Now go."

A huge center slice of ham was simmering on the back of the stove when
Luke got home.  The sweet smell in the air would be yams baked in their
skins and bursting to be buttered.

"Did you hear about the stable fire?"  Luke asked.  Ash nodded.  "I saw
the smoke and called Evie.  She'd heard."

"If it's all right with you, I'd like a Scotch with dinner," Luke said.

"Pour two," Ash said.  "Tough afternoon with Nan?"

"Not so tough as painful," Luke said, handing him his glass.  "She went
all to pieces when she saw the smoke of that burning stable up on the
hill."

"That's not strange.  Not after last week," Ash said.  "It would have
been strange if it hadn't scared her.  It was up there not far from her
own place.  None of us want to see any more dying.  Or burning either,
as far as that goes. Chapter 6

The money-raiser for the Boniface family was held in Madrone on Saturday
night.  The street was already lined with cars when Luke pulled in off
the road.  The town looked different.  He realized what was missing at
once.  Both the ashes and the shell of the burnedout building where Tom
Harrow had died had been cleared away since he had driven in with Nan on
Thursday to check out the smoke.  Only a rectangle of crumbling and
smoke-stained bricks betrayed where the garage had stood. After
double-parking long enough to get Ash and his chair out, Luke drove back
toward the highway, looking for a place to park.

He had stepped from the car and turned to pad his hands against the heat
of the roaster of hot baked beans when he heard footsteps rattling the
gravel along the road behind him.  The street light behind the man threw
his face in darkness.  Not until Rick Boniface spoke did Luke realize
who had followed him.

"You've got guts coming here tonight."

"Hey," Luke said, straightening up and stepping away from the side of
the car.  He wasn't going to take on that much anger with his back
against metal.  "Don't come on to me like that.  I didn't fire your
place."

Boniface didn't seem to have registered his words.  "You and Eddie
Dodge!  What's it costing you to buy him off with those dirt samples
from my place on the record?"

Luke sighed.  "Give me a reason, Boniface, one shred of a reason I would
try to burn you out."

"There was a man running."  Boniface's tone was harsh.  "He came from
behind that garage streaking like a rabbit."

"What direction?"  Luke asked.  "Which way was he running?"

"East, across the road and toward the woods, toward that same place you
appeared from only a few seconds later."

"Maude's Place is east and across the road.  I had to circle that
stinking mulch pile of hers to reach the road."

"But everybody at Maude's was accounted for.  You were the only one with
no reason to be there."

"A hell of a process of elimination.  You like everybody's story but
mine, so you eliminate them.  Are all those people who were there at
Maude's Place friends of yours?"  A driver nudged his car down the road,
drifting slowly to watch for a parking space.  The flash of the car's
headlights lit Rick's face for a vivid moment.  What sounded like anger
telegraphed fear in that brief light.

"Hell, no.  I'm an independent, and no more a friend of Sanders and his
than the next mountain man.  But he was in the john.  People saw him
coming out."

"And I came out of the woods well after the explosion.  I'd have never
come into town if I hadn't felt that blowup and seen the fire.  I wish
to God I hadn't even stopped."

Boniface stood silent for a moment.  "So what call did you have to be
cruising along that road by my place that next morning?"

"I didn't have any call.  I went where Ash directed me.

"What's Ash Porter lost over there?"  Luke groaned.  "Get off it,
Boniface.  If you want to tangle with me, then let's tangle, and you
take your chances.  But lay off Ash.  Ask yourself what Ash has lost and
see what you come up with.  That man grew up on this mountain, grew up
and then got to be king of it.  He was a faller, Boniface, a bull of the
woods.  You expect him ever to lose interest in the only life he had?"

A woman's voice was calling from down the road,

a young voice shrill with concern.  "That's Jenny," Boniface said. "I
got to go."  He paused.  Luke felt him brace his fear with anger. "But
watch it, Adams, watch it."

The couple preceded him up the road.  Boniface's wife, under the loop of
her husband's arm, was pressed so tightly against his body that Luke
marveled she could walk.  He thought of Nan.

Lanterns were strung between the lampposts in back of Maude's Place. The
rich tang of seasoned pork layered the air and the music had already
begun.  Two fiddles, a guitar, and a set of drums were waging a losing
battle against the cacophony of human voices rising and falling from the
crowd clustered around the lot.  Ash hadn't been the only one to get a
call.  A row of miscellaneous casseroles lined the table along with
green salads, mounds of fresh-cut bread, and a lazy Susan of trimmings
for the venison chili.

"I hope nobody saw you bring this in," Evie Hodges told Luke, clearing a
place for the turkey roaster of steaming beans he had carried from the
car.  "Ash's reputation goes before him.  Whatever Ash cooks is always
cleaned out before I get a chance at it."

Groups had sorted themselves out.  Luke looked around bleakly, wishing
Nan had come.  She had been adamant.  "I'd only make it harder for
everyone.

He would have argued with her if he hadn't thought she was right.

The appearance of a party didn't go any further than the lanterns and
the display of food.  No one was smiling.  Except for quick gusts of
laughter and shouting from a band of children racing in the woods, the
voices vacillated between anger and frustration.  A woman Luke didn't
recognize passed from one group to another, officiously burdened with a
clipboard.

"Petition," Evie Hodges explained.  "Folks have written the authorities
and got no response but form letters.  A few folks have even gone down
to the County House in Featherton and tried to collar people. Now we're
going to officially request a hearing with the Board of Supervisors."

"What's supposed to come of this?"  Ash asked.  "Protection," Evie said.
"More police than just poor Eddie.  Maybe somebody up from Sacramento.
Good God, Ash."  Her voice broke.  "Two men have died.  Two men."

"I know, Evie," Ash said, his voice gentle as he reached for her arm.
"At least a man and a boy."  Luke knew Ash meant to be comforting, but
Evie, tilted by her words over the frail edge of her control, nodded and
turned away, fighting tears.

The woman with the clipboard approached, stared fixedly at Ash and Luke
a moment, then turned away.

The last person Luke expected to see at the fundraiser was Burt Roberts.
When the Robertses' sleek red sports car stopped in front of Maude's, he
stared with the rest of the crowd.  But Roberts's wife Amie, in riding
pants and boots, jumped lightly out of the car and looked around as if
confused.

Maude, just crossing the restaurant porch with an armful of condiments,
stopped.  "Looking for somebody, Amie?"

The girl walked to the foot of the stairs, looking up at Maude with
obvious relief.  "I didn't know who was in charge," she said
breathlessly.  "Burt's gone on business.  The listening of the crowd was
so obvious that Amie Roberts moistened her lips nervously with her
tongue.  "If a person can't come to the dinner, is it okay to make a
contribution anyway?"

As she spoke, Bo Sanders got out of the driver's seat and leaned on the
roof of the car, listening.

Maude shrugged.  "Nobody's really in charge, Amie.  It's just a group
effort.  Sure you can contribute.  Anything you give is going to be a
help."

Amie held out a folded bill in her palm.  After a moment's hesitation,
she pushed it in Maude's apron pocket and smiled nervously. "I'm sure
Burt would want to add to that, but you know how busy he is, and always
away.

"Never mind Burt, thanks to yourself, Amie," Maude said.  "Sure you
won't stay for a bite?  What you don't like you can always drown in
ketchup."  She glanced at Bo Sanders.  "You're both welcome."  As Amie
Roberts and Sanders left in a flurry of excuses, Ash prodded Luke with
his elbow.  "I never saw you before with your eyes on sticks."

"Get off that," Luke said.  "It's just that every time I see that girl
she gets prettier.  But, my God, Ash, she looks no more than a child."

"Not every man is drawn to older women.  "Cut that out!"  As Luke
turned, he saw the twinkle of Ash's teasing expression, and relaxed.
"Amie is nice to look at," Ash admitted.  "Bandit even likes her.  But
it makes me hopping mad that she has to be Burt Roberts's property.  But
a hell of a lot of folks around here are, whether they think they
believe it or not."

"Now that's cryptic."

"Do you suppose another ten years in the army they could teach you
another word?"

If Maude wasn't in charge, somebody pretty efficient was.  When the
crowd had been stroked down by music and softened by free beer, a
middle-aged man managed to hammer a pot loud enough to get the crowd
quiet.  "We all know how little money any of us see up here," he said.
"But every man has twenty-four hours in his day.  We need a cleanup crew
and a truck to haul the debris away."  Evie made a list of those whose
hands came up.  "If you can swing a hammer, you can help get a new place
framed in.  Who do I see?  Get those hands up.

When Ash turned and wheeled away, Luke followed.  Maude came down the
steps to meet him.  "Trade favors with you, Maude," Ash said quietly.
The rumble of requests for volunteers went on behind him.

"What's on your mind, Ash?"  she asked, eyeing Luke as she spoke. "You
catch that big roaster I brought the beans in and hold it for me. In
return, I'll stand for six windows in that new place of Boniface's."

"Why don't you speak out and tell them?"  she asked, her tone brusque.

"Because I don't want to, that's why," he snapped.  "I'm fagged, and my
son is taking me back home."

"I've thought of a new word, Ash," Luke told him when the wheelchair was
stowed in the car and Ash sitting beside him.

"So?"

"Curmudgeon," Luke said.  "That army may educate you yet."

The next few days passed lazy and relaxed, turning to a full week. A
storm moved in from the Pacific bringing fresh rain to the mountains and
evenings cool to keep the firebox in the kitchen burning days as well as
evenings.  Nan came over to see Ash in midafternoon every day. When it
was around three, Luke set out toward her cabin to meet her halfway.
About the time he crossed a certain logging road she would materialize
out of the forest shadow, enveloped in a massive green poncho that
belonged to Will.  They walked back to Ash's together, often without
even talking.  Sometime during that week, without knowing when, Luke
quit kidding himself about Nan Harrow's importance to him.  But the old
uncertainty remained, localized now into a pure terror that putting
words on his feelings might endanger the delicate intimacy that
fluttered between them.

She was the one who brought up the project that Ash had mentioned
glancingly so many times.  "Have you shown Luke the bird pictures?"  she
asked Ash.

"I guess I was waiting for the right time," he told her.  "Maybe that's
right now.  He pointed to the bookshelf.  "There, Luke, reach me down
that big green album from the shelf."

"Like I told you before," he went on, with the book closed in his lap.
"That good glass you sent me started the idea, that and what a good
natural artist that Tom was.  I couldn't believe how much difference the
lens made in my seeing.  A lot of the birds that were common when I was
growing up are grown scarce, and I found myself wanting to see them in
better color, their own color, and blown up as near full-size as
possible.  Since no grown man has time to wander woods like a boy does,
I made this deal with Tom.

"A fellow down in Sacramento chose the camera and showed me what lens to
buy.  I couldn't believe the cost of that film, and it had to be sent
off to a real photo lab for developing.  But take a look at these."

Luke turned the pages in amazement.  "My God, it's like a National
Geographic.  You mean that boy took all these pictures?  They are
wonderful."

Nan sat silent, her mouth set in that secret line.

"There was a lot of waste at the beginning," Ash admitted.  "He'd get
one or two good shots to a roll, but he worked at it and got better.
Never went out without that Nikon swinging on his shoulder.  Turn there
to the back if you want to see a wonder."

These were night pictures, the worried stare of an owl peering through
the darkness, the sweep of a hawk luminous in a moonlit sky. Luke
whistled.  "These are treasures."

"They ought to be, for what they cost," Ash said, his tone proud. "When
we first decided to try night pictures, Mr. Patton down in Featherton
told Tom and me about a special night camera called an owl camera.  On
his recommendation, we decided to forget that and go with a special
night lens, along with special film.  Those pictures take real slow to
get the advantage of all the possible light.  Since a man can't hold a
camera still long enough for shots like that, we got Tom a tripod that
folded and was easy to haul around.  Hardly a day passes when I'm here
by myself that I don't go through that book.  I wouldn't take a fortune
for it."

Luke noted Ash's careful handwriting beneath each picture.  "There are
two dates under every one.

Ash nodded.  "There's the date I first saw that kind of bird, then the
date Tom took the picture."  He looked over at Nan staring silent into
the fire, and his voice turned hearty.  "What kind of a host am I? What
can I get you, Nan, a pot of tea?  A glass of wine?"

"Any of that Zinfandel left?"

Ash chuckled, wheeling toward the kitchen.  "There's a fresh bottle,
screaming to be uncorked."  Luke turned through the book again, this
time more slowly.  There must have been sixty plates.  The earliest
sighting date he found was April 23, 1921.  The last picture in the book
was dated May 15, 1985.  Ash had been injured mid-May, 1985.  He needed
time to think about that.  All that business about the boy going wild
this summer past.  Had Ash meant as much to Tom as he had to Luke
himself?  It sounded as though they spent a lot of time together, from
the way Ash talked.  Nan had said he was a baby when his own dad died.

Maybe there was more to say for Tom than the mountain people had thought
through.  He felt Nan's eyes on him and closed the book to smile at her.

Luke hoped the rain might dampen the hysteria on the mountain. This
hadn't been the first false hope he had ever entertained.  Before any
reply came to the petition, the next town meeting was called. Unless the
venting of private fury in public served some viable need, those
assemblies achieved nothing.  Worse than that, they meant precious time
he was losing with Nan.  When Luke took Ash to the first of these, Nan
agreed to come along.  Luke watched her covertly in the rearview mirror.
She curled in the back seat with her chin resting on one hand and stared
out the window.  He wanted her beside him on the seat.  But he always
wanted her close.  Looking at her made it easy to remember how it felt
when she stood unmoving in his arms with her head fragrant against his
chest.

Like Ash, she could read his thoughts.  "You feel wary, as if you were
waiting for something, or maybe were scared," she told him.

"All of the above."

"Because I am me or because I am a woman?"  Poor try at jesting. "You
forget I'm a soldier.  If you know where the fuse is, you can deactivate
the bomb."

"You must know I'm not going to hurt you."  He had tightened his arms
around her.  He didn't know that.  He didn't know any damn thing except
that time had divided itself into two frightening dimensions; being with
Nan and dreading their parting, and waiting to be with Nan, fearful lest
that time not come.

But waiting was everywhere.

The tension should have eased as the days wore on without the outbreak
of a new fire or the announcement of a new tragedy.  Instead, the sense
of hysteria rose steadily, almost impatiently.  The papers reported a
continuing rise in sales of guns and ammunitions.  Notices of town
meetings were posted everywhere.  That Friday a slow rain was still
falling after supper when Luke brought in a fresh load of firewood.

Ash shook his head.  "Set it if you want, but don't light it. There's
another town meeting tonight."

"I'm amazed you haven't had your fill of them," Luke told him.

"Maybe you had other plans?"  Ash asked.  Luke was past dissimulating
with the old man.  "I don't care where I am as long as Nan comes along."

When Ash stayed silent and reached for his pipe, Luke challenged him.
"What have you got against a man liking to be with a woman?"

Ash held his pipe firmly, but the match he scratched on the underside of
the table danced in the air.  "Why should I have anything against women?
I had a wife.  I even had a daughter."  Luke rumpled a sheet of
newspaper from the yellowing stack by the stove.  He laid the kindling
twigs in a careful crossed design to give the damp cedar plenty of
draft.  Had he been home too long?  He couldn't remember feeling such
surges of irritation at the old man as he had in the past days.  Cabin
fever?

Ash's question had pushed past cryptic to irony.  Sure, Ash had a wife,
but she had run off, probably with another man, leaving him a toddler to
raise.  And Ash still had a daughter, whether he wanted to admit it or
not.  And she had "tangled" with him, whatever that meant, and left him,
not to return even when he was crushed by forces more solid than
disappointment.

"I never saw a man take so long to set a fire," Ash said.  The hard edge
of his style rode too lightly on his words to make it through to his
tone.

"I was thinking," Luke told him.

"Well you might," Ash said.  "Very well you might.  I've thought more on
this than most men, I'd guess.  If a man can think of any earthly way to
live without a woman he dotes on, he should do it.  And conversely, if a
woman can take any joy outside of loving a man, she should, too."

Luke hesitated.  He could banter with the old man.  He could play Ash's
own game and change the subject.  Or he could be flat-out honest.
"That's a darker side of it than I see," he said.  "That's your age
talking," Ash said.  "Not that I blame you.  Nature confuses the young
to keep new broods always coming on.  We are set on the ground walking
and right away we start dreaming of flight.  Young, we fly into
attachments.  Old, we fly away from them.  In the middle everybody
preens and mates and scratches and gathers.  But finally we all yearn to
fly again."

This was the closest Luke had ever heard Ash come to talking about
death.  He should have grown accustomed to the old man's reading his
unspoken thoughts, but Ash startled him.

"Not death," Ash said.  "Pain.  That second flight is away from the pain
of attachment."

Only in the car on the way through the slow, darkling drizzle of rain
did Ash move from the general to the specific.  "Mind you, I got nothing
against Nan Harrow.  She's like a real daughter to me.  But first off,
she's a mother.  Women who can be both wife and mother fall outside my
experience."

The dark of the car was emboldening.  "What about my mother?"  Luke
asked.

"The choice she made is clear enough.  She came up here to watch over
you.  The fact she didn't get to very long isn't her fault.  Death has
its own schedule."

"How do you know how she acted when she was with her man?"  Luke
challenged him.  "You always said you hadn't met him."

"I never did," he said.

Ash's flat answer irritated him.  "Dammit, Ash, that's no answer. My
mother must have talked to you about him, some at least."

Ash nodded.  "She did that, but all I know of him is what Belle told me.
I don't want any man judging me by what Linden's mother gave witness
of."

"That's fair," Luke decided aloud.  He leaned to study the road ahead.
The crowd had already gathered enough to fill all the space close up. He
was going to have to let Ash off again and go find a place for the car.
Distracted as he was, he almost missed Ash's quiet comment.

"Fair.  When it's over, that's all I want them to say

of me.  Fair."  Now, that time he really had to be talking about death.

The air in the crowded room was dense from tobacco smoke and the
moisture of the day-long rain.  Luke found a seat at the end of a row,
where Ash's wheelchair could sit beside him.  He wished Nan had agreed
to come with them.

"It's no use," she told him.  "They aren't out to get to the bottom of
this.  They just want somebody to blame.  If they can't blame a stranger
like you, they'll pick on somebody else.  I'm better off at home."

"You could at least stay and have supper with us," Ash had put in.

She shook her head.  "I have lots of stuff up there, thanks to Luke
taking me shopping."

Luke, watching the way she slid in under the straps of her inevitable
knapsack, rose to walk her through the woods.  There went his evening,
right there.

The sheriff had chaired all the meetings before.  The crowd stirred
restlessly as the room filled and the designated hour passed without any
sign of Eddie Dodge.  The same broad man who had drummed up the
volunteer help for Rick Boniface finally rose and went up front.

"Well," he said.  "Looks like we're on our own tonight.  Anybody know
where Dodge got off to?"  When no answer came, he posed a second
question.  "Did anybody talk to him about coming here tonight?"

A woman raised her hand.  "He knew about it.  I saw him in the store
buying cigarettes about four.  He couldn't have missed seeing the sign."

"But you didn't say anything?"

She shrugged.  "Just that I supposed I'd see him tonight.  He said he
hoped so' but he had another meeting before that."

"Like any other meeting could be as important as this."

Another voice chimed in.  "We might as well not have any law as have a
man who hangs back from arrests."

"Now don't overstate things," the man at the podium coaxed.  "The law
can't make an arrest until it has a suspect."

Luke knew without looking that the man on his feet was Rick Boniface.
"Don't put any money on that!"  Boniface said angrily.  "He's got
himself a suspect.  I saw the car license the night my place was fired.
Even after Dodge found the car and the lab reports showed soil from my
road on it, he's still hanging back."

Ash's voice broke in.  "You know damned well my Luke didn't fire that
house of yours, Rick Boniface."

"That's not the only thing," another voice spoke up.  "What's he done
about the robbery up at Tom Harrow's, not even counting the fact the boy
was murdered?"

"I know what that boy's camera was worth," somebody said.  "That's way
past petty thievery."

Luke felt Ash's anger vibrating the sleeve of his coat.  When Luke laid
his hand on Ash's arm and murmured, "Easy," the old man stared straight
forward and shook his hand off.

The complaints voiced all over the room brought Burt Roberts to his
feet.  Luke turned at his voice.  This was his first good look at
Roberts since the inquest.

Burt had taken a seat against the back wall of the room.  Amie Roberts,
her slenderness belted into a pale trench coat spattered with rain, sat
between her husband and Bo Sanders.  She stared straight ahead, as if
her mind were a million miles away.  Having seen her tentative manner
with Maude, it struck Luke that the girl was shy. Maybe her total
absence of expression was a defense against the room of eyes turned on
her husband and, of course, herself.

"Look, people," Burt Roberts said.  "We all feel the same growing
concern about what's been happening.  But this talk is getting us
nowhere.  There's got to be a next step."

"Law," Rick Boniface said.  "We need some law up here with guts."

Burt shrugged.  "Maybe that's the answer."

"We've tried petitioning for more law," someone shrilled.  "We got
nothing, worse than nothing."

"Elected officials can be recalled," Roberts said mildly.  Then he sat
down.

"Petition," somebody called.  "We can petition to have Eddie Dodge taken
off our necks up here."

"And his books," someone added.  "With all the taxes we cough up, I'd
like to see his books."

The wording was hashed and rehashed until the petition was agreed on, to
audit the sheriff's records and recall him for incompetence. Somebody
had risen to suggest an addendum when the door burst open, sweeping the
room with a rush of cold, wet air.

"Murder!"  Silas Engel shouted from the doorway.

"Bloody murder."

As the old man's voice trailed off' Luke turned to see Engel sway to
brace himself against the side of the door.  He was hatless, his long
hair pasted to his skull by rain.  He leaned to one side, hugging his
left arm to his body as he struggled for balance.  The same rain that
had glued his hair down had diluted the blood oozing from between the
fingers that gripped his bloody jacket.

"Murder," he wailed.  "I been shot."  The room exploded with sound as
men leaped to their feet, shouting.  There were as many screams as tears
from the women.  Come on, Ash," Luke whispered.  "Turn this thing around
and let's get out of here."  Ash nodded and obeyed wordlessly.

Outside it wasn't really raining as much as drizzling, the air so heavy
that it turned to water against his face.  "Just brace me," Ash said.
"I'll go with you to the car."  Halfway down the road they could still
hear the shouting inside the meeting hall.

"Poor Eddie," Luke said as he closed the passenger door beside Ash.

The old man sat silent as Luke started the car, turned the vehicle
around, and drove toward the road.  The silence was uncomfortable, heavy
and painful.

"Back there I was thinking about flash points," Luke said.  "I been
raised hearing about flash points, knowing that the difference of a
single degree in temperature stood between safety and something
exploding into flame.  Who would have thought that the sight of old
Engel's blood would trigger a flash point in that crowd?"

"Men have them, too," Ash said quietly.  "A man goes along thinking he's
on top of his own nature.  Then something fires his flash point.  I hope
to God Eddie Dodge doesn't show his face until the fever goes down."

As they neared the general store, Ash asked Luke to pull in.  "What do
we need?"  Luke asked.  "Scotch," Ash told him, struggling to wrest his
wallet from his pocket.

"I'll get it," Luke told him.  "I thought we had plenty."

"One man's plenty is another man's drought," Ash growled.

Ruby was stacking a shelf at the back with the radio blaring.  She
kicked the ladder away and came up front.  "Town meeting over?  They're
quitting early tonight."

"Ash and I just took off," he told her, pulling the bottle from the
shelf.  "Silas Engel staggered in with a bullet in his arm and the crowd
went crazy."

She stared at him a moment.  "Silas is the crazy one.  He's been asking
for a bullet in those woods ever since I can remember.  He was screaming
for it, to go out at night as trigger-happy as these people are now. Her
voice dropped with sudden repentance.  He's okay, isn't he?"

"Like I say, we left.  Surely somebody was going to see to him."

She rang up the Scotch and handed him change.  "Where's your lady friend
tonight?"  She met his glance levelly, daring him to contradict her.
"Nan Harrow didn't go with you?"

"Maybe she's had enough of these useless drills," he told her.

"It's got to be tough for her right now.  Losing one kid and having the
other one off God knows where."

As irritated as Luke himself felt about Will Harrow's absence, he didn't
like Ruby's attacking Nan's son.  He wanted to protest her judgment, but
let the moment go too long.  "Well?"  she challenged him. "You haven't
seen Will Harrow around here, have you?" Chapter 7

The only calendar in Ash's house was back in the bee room.  It had come
from a service station whose name Luke didn't recognize.  Neither did he
recognize the handwriting of the terse notations that recorded what care
the bee colonies had gotten.  It was clearly a man's handwriting, bold
pen strokes, almost vertical except for a slight tilt to the left.  From
what Luke remembered hearing about graphology, those factors indicated a
writer inclined to strong ideas and who kept his own counsel.  Since the
calendar entries had certainly been put there by Will Harrow, Luke
glared at them every time he passed.  If Nan's son had a strong mind, he
wasn't using it, and if he was keeping his own counsel by letting Nan
handle Tom's death on her own, he needed a better adviser.

Two and a half weeks had passed since the boy's death.  He had watched
Nan come lonely from the woods, and go lonely back home.  Ruby had
spoken of Will's absence.  Ash had, too.  Maybe Nan's talent as a
state-of-the-art mother extended into the farther reaches of complete
understanding.  Only, Nan had said nothing about Will's being gone.  How
many times had he heard her say, "A mother watches over her kids"?

Mostly he avoided looking at that calendar at all.  Back in Germany a
month of leave had sounded like forever.  Nan had changed that.  With
half his leave spent, the remaining days had picked up momentum,
stumbling over each other in passing.  And nothing had been solved on
the mountain.  Eddie Dodge was fighting for his job, loaded guns still
leaned inside cabin doors, and Rick Boniface was trying to coerce
everyone he could collar in joining his crusade to get Luke Adams behind
bars for the public good.

All that was bad enough.  Leaving Nan was the unthinkable part. The best
he could do was live for the afternoons they spent together.

Ash seldom admitted that he usually dozed a while after lunch, but he
did.  He'd waken with a start, make a trip to the john, and start
peering around at the clock to see if it was time for Nan to come by. In
the end he would get impatient enough to bark at Luke.  "For God's sake,
go see what's keeping that Nan."

Luke knew what was keeping Nan.  He had suggested that she wait there in
the woods where he could meet her and walk her in.  She had protested
when he first came up with the idea.  "I can't lie to Ash.  I don't even
want to."

"I'm not suggesting a lie," he told her.  "I'm saying that we need...
Anyway, I need at least a little time alone with you.  Hell, Nan, it's
not a lot to ask, just that I get to meet you and touch you before we go
back to Ash."

She had leaned against him.  "This is wild and insane and somehow
dangerous."

He lifted her chin with a single finger and smiled at her. "Dangerous to
whom?  If Ash weren't such a rockbound old conservative he would
understand and accept that a few years between us don't keep us from
loving."

"We can't play that game every day," she countered.  "Ash would figure
that out fast enough.  If I want you to come for me, I'll settle down by
the path and wait for you."

"Anything to stay in control," he told her.  She shrugged and angled her
eyes at him.  "Maybe just keep you off balance."

If Ash suspected anything, he had kept his mouth shut.

That day it was Luke himself who got restless, eyeing the Seth Thomas
with growing impatience.  He rose, stretched, and announced he was going
off to "see what was keeping Nan."

Bandit was trained far better than the average dog.  Luke guessed Will
to be responsible for that.  When Bandit was told to sit and stay, he
nearly bounced and wriggled himself to death, but he never left the
spot.  Luke, unwilling to share a shred of Nan's attention even with
him, left him whining mournfully on the porch.

The bees had either figured out that he had robbed them or sensed the
coming of winter in the cool rains.  They were working harder than ever.
He paused to watch an elaborate dance outside the last hive of the row.
If he could remember the pattern until he got back, he could find that
patch of bloom for himself from the diagrams in Ash's old bee book.

The woods had smelled different ever since the rains began, fresher and
dustier both at once.  Once in a while a breeze brought a whiff of cedar
smoke from a newly fired stash pile somewhere on the mountain.  He
startled a jay and took a scolding before crossing the road to find Nan.

He knew she was in the woods before he could see her.  He didn't
understand that himself, but he was always right.  He had told Nan early
on that he always knew whether she was waiting for him or not when he
left the road.  She had scoffed at him.  "There's no way you can see me
from the road," she told him.

"It's not a matter of seeing," he told her.  "The woods change when
there's a human in them.  Birds turn shrill from nerves and the rustling
gets sly."  She had made a soft sound in her throat like swallowed
laughter.  "You don't buy that?"  She shook her head, still with a
half-smile.  "If you're there to listen, there's already a human
changing the woods."

She hadn't put it as a question, so he hadn't answered.  Never mind how,
he always knew.

At the turn of the path, he saw her.  At first he thought she was
sleeping against the base of the big fir.  She was sitting curled, her
back resting against the tree trunk and her arms looped around her legs.
Her head was resting on her knees so that strands of that strange hair
fanned over the faded blue of her jeans and concealed her face.  He
didn't even call out to her.  He liked being able to look at her all of
a piece like that without being distracted by her wide-spaced eyes
looking back at him, studying him.  He liked thinking of how putty-soft
and slowly she wakened, dragging herself back to consciousness with her
breath coming in short, shallow exhalations like sighs.  For a moment
there he was tempted to let himself down beside her to fit his body
against her warmth.  Instead, he kneeled and trailed a single finger
across her forehead to lift the hair from her face.

Nan's head rolled to one side at his touch.  All the way to the side. He
felt something pass his lips, a grunt, a curse, he didn't know what, as
her head, severed at the bubbling red line where her throat had been,
came to rest on her left shoulder.  Her eyes stared past him into the
woods, past his shock and the sudden thundering pulse in his temples.

He staggered to his feet, unsteadied by horror, backed a few steps, then
turned to run.  He was nearly to the road when the roar of an
approaching lumber truck brought him to a stop.  He hunched silently in
a grove of second-growth trees to let the rig pass.  As the sound faded,
he heard the faint, distant whine of a siren and felt his flesh crawl.

Then he remembered.

Someone had been alive in the woods when he came in.  Someone besides
himself.  He had figured it was Nan and he smiled at knowing she was
waiting, knowing that meant that in spite of her stinginess with words,
she was as eager as he to steal what fugitive moments they could find
alone.

But Nan was already dead when he got there.  The only person alive in
those woods besides himself had to be the monster who had carved that
neat line of death across her throat.  He stood and stared into the
woods, his heart thundering against the hard knot of pain in his chest.
No extra leaf stirred, no shadow changed, but someone was still alive in
those woods besides himself, listening and waiting.

The siren drew closer.  Luke turned and ran toward Ash's house, not even
staying to the path, not even dodging the branches that slapped and
clawed his streaming face.

His feet weighed at least a ton each, picking them up and laying them
down.  When he reached the edge of the clearing, he heard Bandit
whining.  The dog was still waiting on the porch, his lean rib cage
thumping on the painted floor with eagerness.

"Okay, Bandit," he said, his voice thick and alien in his ears. The dog
leaped into the clearing and landed running.  His tongue, with its
inexhaustible flood of slimy spit, washed Luke's hands all the way to
the porch.

Ash wasn't waiting at the door; already that was strange.  Ash always
waited at the door to get the first sight of Nan coming out of the woods
with that clean walk of hers, that walk that told the world she knew
where she was going.  Luke shoved the dog back and stepped inside.  Ash
was at his table, staring straight ahead into the woods. He didn't even
look around.  Luke paused, gasping around the growing weight in his
chest to find wind to speak with.  That was all right. Ash wouldn't have
let him speak anyway.  The old man lifted his right fist and brought it
down on the table hard, like a man setting an ax into a green stump.

"Don't say a word," he intoned in a slow, steady rhythm.  He paused only
a single beat, then repeated himself with elaboration.  "Don't say a
goddamned word.  I can't deal with words anymore."  He whirled the chair
so swiftly that Luke stepped back, bringing a whine of hope from Bandit,
still pressed against the door.  "They should have never scraped me off
that highway and put me back together.  I should have never let them
string my nose to sugar like a babe too weak to suck.  If I died, maybe
she wouldn't have had to."

"There was somebody else there," Luke told him.  "Sure as hell there
was," Ash exploded.  "There was a damned traffic jam there.  Bo Sanders
was there.  You were there."

"Bo Sanders?"

He nodded.  "He called in to the sheriff's office on that radio in his
car.

"And he saw me?"

"He couldn't have."  Ash shook his head.  "You hadn't had time to get
there unless you flew.  Eddie Dodge must have hung up on Sanders and
dialed here without putting the phone down.  He didn't tell me what was
up; he only asked to talk to you."  Ash stopped and fought for breath.
"I told him you were meeting Nan Harrow in the woods."

"There was somebody else there," Luke repeated.  Ash just looked down at
his hands, which must have been smarting from those blows on his table.
"Dodge said for you to stay here if you came back.  Her throat, Luke?"

"Her throat."

Ash turned back to his window and stared through it, past the sheared
clearing and into the woods that were his life.  "You never know what
you've done until it's too late, Luke.  I never knew I had taken me the
wrong woman until she was gone and the shadow of her restless hungers
darkened Linden's eyes.  I never knew I had taken me a son until you
came back too stubborn to keep failing and too proud to take help. I
never knew The whine of Eddie Dodge's siren overwhelmed Bandit's plea.
Ash said, "Oh hell, what's the use?  Once we know what we've done wrong,
it's always too late."

Luke walked to the porch and called the dog off Eddie Dodge.  Eddie
stood beside the car looking at Luke.  "You wasn't here when I called."

Luke nodded.  "I had walked through the woods to meet Nan Harrow."

Dodge sighed.  "I guess you know you're coming down to the office with
me.

"I'm coming, too," Ash called from behind Luke.  "Get my coat, and reach
me the checkbook out of that drawer where I keep it."

"You might not have any way to come back home, Ash," Dodge told him.

"Then again I might," Ash said, closing the front door behind him.

"Who's with her?"  Luke asked Dodge.  "I deputized Sanders," he said
"The sheriff is sending a man up from Featherton with cameras and all."
Chapter 8

Luke tried to talk Eddie Dodge out of taking him down in the cruiser,
but the deputy was adamant.  Ash, triumphant at his small victory of
being allowed to come along, was probably safer with Eddie driving
anyway.  Halfway down the hill, a billowing cloud of white smoke erupted
from above the trees to the left and south of the road. Although it had
to be a half-mile or more away, the scent of wood smoke flowed in
through the open window of Dodge's car.  Luke concentrated intently on
the burgeoning smoke, trying to fill his mind with it, to blot out the
vivid memory of Nan's head rolling lazily sideways at his touch.

Eddie Dodge peered into the mirror and caught his eye.  "I know what
that one is," he said.  "I was notified they were going to burn that
slash pile.  We could still get a dry spell or two.  There's a crew
there watching it."

Ash grunted something unintelligible.  Eddie glanced at him and fell
silent.  He turned off on the road to Madrone and drove past Maude's
Place.  The sheriff's substation was at the edge of town, a trailer up
on blocks with a five-hundred-gallon gas pump set beside it. Eddie
slowed down and cursed quietly to himself.  Silas Engel had gathered a
crowd on the vacant lot in front of the trailer.  Although Engel's
wounded left arm was tied close to his chest in a soiled makeshift
brace, he was shouting and gesticulating with his one good arm.
'Murder!"  he yelled.  "Bloody murder, and God's will be done."

Dodge was out of the cruiser instantly and at Engel's side, clumsy with
annoyance.  "Now look here, Silas," he said, taking the old man's good
arm.  "You don't want to be run in for disturbing the peace, do you?"
Dodge fished in his pocket.  "I'll stand you a beer over at Maude's.
Just cool it.  We've got serious business."  The old man jerked his arm
away and struck Dodge's hand, sending the coins rolling. "Murder!"  he
cried.  "Bloody murder, and God's laws avenged!  The temptress lies
dead."  As Engel swatted at Dodge's attempt to restrain him, his voice
deepened, taking on a ponderous rhythm.  "In the end she is bitter as
wormwood, and her feet go down to death."

Ash roared from the front seat.  "Luke, get me that damned chair. Silas,
you old reprobate.  I'll shut you up!"  He flailed helplessly behind his
seat, groping for the wheelchair Luke had folded there.

"Now, Ash," Dodge called to him.  "You know how Silas is.  Pay him no
mind.  You stay in there until I get-"

"Luke, dammit, get me that chair," Ash howled, ignoring Dodge. "Know how
he is!  Everybody up here knows he's bonkers.  That gives him no license
to vilify Nan."

"A man without sense," Silas screamed back at him.  "All of them, all
her men.  Like birds into snares, down to the chamber of death."

"Give me a hand here," Dodge shouted to the men gaping around them.
"Pitch in and help."

"If I only had my legs," Ash moaned.  "If I only had my legs, I'd shut
that filthy mouth of his."  By the time Luke got the chair in place with
Ash into it, Engel was being hauled down the road, still shouting.

Dodge seized the back of Ash's chair.  "Straighten up, Ash Porter," he
snapped at him.  "Good God, all I need is you two old idiots trying to
kill each other."  Luke followed numbly as Dodge wheeled Ash to the door
of the trailer and tilted him up the makeshift stairs and into the
untidy office.  The windowsills were golden with drifted pine pollen and
the floor streaked with boot marks.  The room reeked of stale strong
coffee and trapped smoke.  Eddie had his sleeves rolled up above his
elbows.  The hair on his arms swam in sweat as he leaned on his desk and
shoved an overflowing ashtray to one side.  "All right, Adams.  Give me
your story."

"He doesn't have to say a thing without a lawyer," Ash snapped.

"Come on, Ash," Dodge pleaded.  "I just need to get this square in my
head.  You didn't see me hauling Luke down to Featherton, did you? You
don't see anybody taking this down, do you?  You don't see my writing
things for Luke to sign.  I just want to know what in hell happened and
when."

Luke stared at him.  Nan.  Nan was what had happened.  Dodge's tone
softened, "Look, Luke.  An investigator is probably already working up
there by now.  They're going to go over everything, shred by hair.  I'll
be meeting Doc Meyers down at the mortuary for an inquest.  Maybe he can
even fix a time of death.  I need some kind of frame to put this in.
What time did you go off to meet Nan Harrow?"

"Not even five minutes before you called, Eddie Dodge," Ash broke in.

"You really want me to put you and that chair outside till this is over,
Porter?"  Dodge challenged him.

"I don't know the time," Luke admitted.  "It was after three-thirty. She
usually came over about then."

"But you went to meet her today?"  Luke felt his flesh redden.  "I often
did that."  There was nothing to tell but the truth, and he told it,
over and over, as he had been pressed to do the day Tom Harrow died.

"You keep saying somebody was in the woods," Dodge said.  "It couldn't
have been Sanders.  He saw her and ran out to the road on the other end
of that section to call me.  You must have seen somebody to know they
were there."

"I saw no one," Luke repeated.  "But somebody was there.  Engel." He
thought suddenly.  "Who told Silas Engel Nan was dead?"

Dodge studied him a moment, frowning.  Then he rose.  "Help yourself to
that stale coffee back there and I'll go try to get some sense out of
him.  Use the powdered cream even if you don't want it. That coffee's
got to be a hundred proof by now."

"What in hell did Nan ever do to anybody?"  Ash asked.  His words echoed
bleakly in the quiet room as Luke went to pour them each a cup of
coffee.

Dodge dragged himself back and slammed the door hard behind him. "Luke
Adams, I never saw a man so intent on making himself look bad. Everybody
on this mountain knew Tom wasn't cold before you and Nan started
carrying on."

Luke didn't realize he was on his feet until Ash caught his arm and
pulled him back down.

"Should have put that different," Dodge mumbled.  "But it was common
knowledge, Luke.  Lots of talk.  Now she's dead.  And yet, I'll be
damned if I can see my way clear to holding you with what Silas is
saying.  He says there's more than one of you coming and going from that
cabin of hers, and at all hours, too."

Sick.  If he didn't let the anger loose, Luke was going to puke all over
that cluttered desk already glistening with sheriff sweat.  Too many
swift images flashed at Dodge's words.  Nan's insistence that he never
go into her house.  Nan, her back firm against the closed door, facing
him.  Nan and her loads of groceries, more than he and Ash could use in
a week.  "So maybe that's why you should hold me," Luke told him. "Maybe
I got tired of being only one in her crowd.  Jealous rage, is that what
you want?  That old fool Engel hasn't lost his cow, he's lost his
marbles."

"Be grateful for the old cow Boss," Dodge said.  "Engel is in those
woods all the time.  He may throw more scripture in with the truth than
we want to hear, but he sees what he sees.  Men who believe in the kind
of God Silas does don't make a practice of lying."  Luke looked at him,
swallowing hard against waves of nausea.  "You two come on, Dodge said.
"I'm releasing you on your own recognizance, Luke Adams.  You know
better than to leave as well as I know better than to do this."  He rose
and glared at Luke.  "They're going to get my head for this, you wait
and see.  They're going to chew me up and spit me out so small a hawk
couldn't find me.  I'll be honest.  When I brought you in here, I meant
to charge you.  I didn't have one single other thing in my mind.  But I
can't do it in good conscience with what Engel is saying.  Come on. I'll
drive you back up the hill and see how the investigator is coming
along."

A number of men and women waited across the street, watching.  One of
them shouted at Dodge, an epithet Luke didn't catch.  "Go home," Eddie
called back.  "There ain't any party."  Behind the sound of Dodge's
motor starting, Luke heard an angry voice shout a slogan he hadn't heard
since coming home.  "The U.S. army trains killers."

It was silent in the car going up the hill.  Dodge pulled in close to
the porch to make it easy for Ash.  "Hold yourself ready for a hearing
tomorrow," he told Luke.  He paused.  "If you got any ideas on how to
locate Will Harrow, I'd appreciate the help.  I'll go through her cabin
after a bit, for all that's worth."

Ash wheeled through the door and went straight for his table.  The
afternoon had wasted him.  His flesh had pasted itself closer to his
bones, throwing his nose and eye sockets in craggy relief.  He reached
for the binoculars and closed his hands around them tight.  He half
lifted them, then remembered.  "We're going to have to think about
supper, I guess.

Luke shook his head.  "Later I could scare something up.  You missed
your nap, you know."

Ash bridled automatically.  "Nap!"  Then he slumped.  "You know I don't
take naps.  Anyway, with the sun behind the hill, it's already dusk. But
you could set a Scotch over here for me before you leave."

Luke lifted out two glasses and then put one back.  Bandit whined from
the porch as Luke set the drink beside Ash.  "Okay," he told the dog.
"So you're hungry.

When he carried the bag of dog food out to refill Bandit's dish, he
realized Ash was right.  The woods were dark with twilight and a few
pale stars struggled to visibility through the deepening color of the
sky.  The trembling seized him without warning along with the swift
flood of burning tears.  The last day of Nan's life was gone.  After he
set Bandit's bag of food back into the pantry, he pulled Nan's bottle of
Zinfandel out from under the sink to take back to the cabin with him.

Smelling the pipe smoke from the center of the clearing raised a fine
brush of hair on the nape of Luke's neck.  That wasn't Ash's Durham, and
Ash hadn't even reached for his pipe.  He had two choices, to walk
straight across that clearing or take a devious route, stealthily from
tree to tree, until he could see whose pleasure was being carried
fragrant on the wind.  But it was his cabin, and he never knew a man
with less to lose than he had.

He walked straight across the middle of the clearing, even though it
meant he was fully exposed every step of the way.  As he passed the
beehives he saw the figure of a man in the shadow of that blooming vine.
He was leaning back against the closed door, waiting.

"Well, anyway, you got guts," the voice spoke from the shadow.  "If I'd
have wanted to nail you, I had a half-dozen chances."  His tone was more
amused than threatening, a young voice, slurring the words,
mountain-style.

"Why would you want to do that?"  The man stood up straight, the pipe
loose in his right hand.  He was average-sized, heavily bearded, with a
barrel chest above lean hips.  "Will Harrow here.  The word is that you
killed my mother."

Luke's anger rose as quickly as his mind credited what he had heard.  He
held it out of his voice as best he could.  "And you don't think so?"

"You could convince me," Will said with a note of invitation.  "On the
surface, I can't imagine why."

"Maybe we should go in," Luke suggested.  "In case Ash raises his glass
at that window."

"When he's hurting, Ash doesn't look out, but in," Will told him,
stepping aside to let Luke enter before him.

"There's coffee," Luke offered.  He lifted the bottle he was carrying.
"There's even red wine, if that's your pleasure."

"Coffee's fine."  Will nodded.  "But after a bit.  I want to hear your
side of this story."

"And I want to hear yours, dammit."  Luke exploded without knowing it
was coming.  "The hell Nan has been through these past weeks.  And
alone!"

"She had you."  Will's voice was level.  "She was calling all the shots
herself, the whole time."

Luke looked at Will Harrow in the lamplight.  Like Nan's, his eyes were
spaced a little far apart.  His brows, darker than Nan's, met over the
bridge of his nose, and his eyes were as level as his voice.

"I wasn't enough," Luke told him.  "Nobody would have been.  Tom was her
kid.  But you were there, and in the right way.  Like I said, I want to
hear your side of this story."

Luke felt himself sag under the energy of this man's patience. "She came
to Ash's afternoons.  There was a place we used to meet on the way. When
I got there, she was dead."

"You two were lovers?"

"What kind of a question is that?"  Luke heard his voice rising but
couldn't get it under control.  "It's none of your damned business.  But
I loved her, if you're interested to hear that."

"Hey," Will broke in.  "I guess I just wanted Nan to have had everything
she's going to miss by dying too soon.  And she was fair gone on you.

"How do you know that?"  Luke challenged him.  "I could use that coffee
now, Will replied.  Will was a leaner, as Nan had been.  Arms crossed
over that rounded chest, he rested his weight against the wall and
watched Luke measure the coffee, fill the pot, and press the metal
starter until a spark caught the gas, flared up a minute, then settled
to blue jets.

"So who do you think killed her?"  Will asked.  Luke sighed.  "All I've
done today besides fight the shakes is ask myself that.  What I can't
find is cause."

"What was the cause of Tom being killed?"  Will asked.  "He was little
more than a kid."

"I figured it had something to do with all that money they found," Luke
said.  His words brought back Dodge's last remark.  "The sheriff was
going up to go through Nan's cabin."

"I figured on that."  Will nodded.  "I got my stuff out as soon as I
heard.  It's stowed up in the loft of Ash's barn."

"I'm missing something, Will Harrow.  You had your stuff at Nan's? And
how come you picked today to come back?"

"I've been back and forth the whole time.  I was out of the state when
they got Tom.  Mom called me that night late.  I wanted to start
straight home, but she went all to pieces, begging me to stay away. When
I reminded her I had work to do down here, she gave in but made me
promise to hide out once I got here.  I've never seen her that scared
before, and it was too much, along with the grief."

Will's eyes were like Nan's, no particular color but flecked with brown
under a blackness of lashes.  At first Luke had thought she painted her
eyes that way, but decided different when they were always the same,
even when she was crying.

"Whoever killed her had to be mad.  Only a madman kills without cause.

"Mad or angry," Will said.  "He also had to be somebody she knew. Nan
wasn't a woman to let just anybody get close to her.  What else I heard
was that you could use a friend on this mountain."

"I wouldn't argue that.  Dodge is trying to be fair, but some of the
others are out for my hide."

"I'm out for who killed Nan," Will said.  "I've been two weeks now
trying to get used to Tom being gone.  I'm not ever going to get used to
losing Nan."

"We've got that in common.  Are you offering to be that friend?"

Will noded.  "If Nan was right, I may need a friend as bad as you do.
And Ash may need us both."

"Now what does that mean?"

"Ash has been real busy since that accident of his.  He's ruffled a lot
of feathers."

'The plume of steam from the coffeepot smelled rich enough.  Luke stared
at it.  He needed an eggshell to settle the grounds.  He didn't have an
egg.  He shrugged and swung the pot a minute before he filled two mugs.
Will's words had imprinted without registering.  "Are you saying Ash
Porter is behind all this stuff that's come down?"

Will had the mug to his lips, blowing on it.  Nan's eyes looked back at
Luke through the mist of steam.  "Ash and Nan together have been poking
at a hornet's nest for a long time.  I've been party to a little of that
myself.  Once you start stirring things up, you're begging the other guy
to make a move.

"Then you know who killed Nan?"  Luke asked.  "I honestly don't. And
knowing is only going to be half.  We've got to prove it, too."

"Dammit, Will.  Ash has nearly driven me out of my mind these past two
weeks saying halves of things.  I'm not in any mood to take it from you,
too.  Ruffled whose feathers?  Poked at what hornet's nest?"

Will balanced his mug carefully and let himself down on the daybed.
"Burt Roberts has been a thorn in Ash's craw ever since he slept with
his daughter Linden for years and years before throwing her over for a
rich man's daughter half his age or less."  Will met Luke's eyes.  "That
can't be news to you.

"I was gone," Luke protested.  "I only knew they fought and Linden took
off.  But that would explain

There wasn't any point in rehashing the Linden who had been against the
Linden who was.

"Ash settled all those years for the kind of simmering hate mountain men
grow up on.  He made no secret he thought Roberts was a crook, and a
lowlife bandit raping everyone in sight.  His words, I might add.  Being
crippled by that company truck changed all that.  From the day he got
back on this mountain he was out to prove Burt Roberts belonged in
prison."

Luke whistled softly.  "Dodge called it a feud."

"It looked like a half a feud until Jerry Hodges was killed.  And all
this time Tom was going down the tube, from the very day ASh got hit."

"I have a theory about your brother," Luke volunteered.  "Ash must have
been all the father he ever knew.  If anything had happened to Ash when
I was growing up, I would have probably blown forty ways to Sunday, too.
But I still don't see how Nan got involved in Ash's one-way feud."

Will shrugged.  "I figured it was Tom and his money.  Nan couldn't
believe how that boy went out of shape.  Even though Tom had a lot of
trouble with Roberts when he was a kid, Nan couldn't think of anybody
else who could be feeding that much money to the kid."

"Ash said Tom was working for him."

"He was, for a couple of years there.  He took great pictures, and Ash
paid him well.  But Tom quit taking pictures when Ash got hurt.  But he
still had money coming in from somewhere, more money than we had ever
seen.

"Roberts isn't one to pay out for nothing."  Will shrugged. "Crooks and
lowlife bandits have been exploiting kids since the beginning of time.
At least as far back as Dickens."  He frowned and rose.  "Speaking of
bandits, what's that dog raising hell about?"  As Luke and Will let
themselves out into the shadow of the porch, Ash flipped on his front
floodlight.  The old man shouted from his chair in the door and brought
the dog, tail down, back to the porch.  A chestnut horse, its ears laid
back from nervousness, danced in the gleam of the flood.  Amie Roberts,
looking no more substantial than a paper doll, swung from the saddle,
spoke to her horse, then ran toward Ash with both hands out in greeting.
Luke watched her bend to an embrace just as Nan used to do, and his
throat closed on him.

"That old man should have had a house full of kids," Will said. "Him and
Nan both.  Want to go over?"

When Luke shook his head, Will turned back into the house.  "No
disrespect intended to your coffee, Luke, but why don't we wash it away
with some of that wine?"

As Luke filled their glasses, his mind went back to Will's words.
Cryptic.  What did it all add up to?  "Then you think maybe Tom was hit
on the head because of something Roberts had put him up to?"

"It's a distinct possibility.  Or maybe the money, like the sheriff
thinks.  Remember, somebody tore up Tom's cabin looking for something."

"Your mother brought a bundle of something, probably papers, here for
Ash to hide the night of Tom's funeral.  Maybe that was what they
wanted."

Will shook his head.  "That was some stuff that was special to her. When
she fretted about it to me, I told her to go ahead, make herself
comfortable about it."  He didn't smile, but like Nan, his eyes changed
when he was amused.  "Any papers they might have wanted were with me,"
he said.  "But they wouldn't know that, would they?"

Bandit began again, whining this time.  From the doorway they watched
Amie Roberts walk stiffly away from Ash's cabin, mount her horse, and
gallop off toward the road.

"I give Ash two minutes to ring that bell," Will said.  "If you don't
mind, I'll stretch out here on this sofa."

"What about supper?"

Will shook his head.  "No food, thanks."  He was already down, eyes
closed and his arms folded over his chest.  "Like good intentions,
coffee sometimes works the opposite of how I think it will."  He opened
one eye and looked at Luke.  "Don't get upset if I'm not here when you
get back.  I won't be gone long, and I'll stay in touch."

Ash rang his bell from the porch almost at once.

"I thought you had taken off," he said as Luke worked his way past
Bandit's tongue.

"You had company," Luke reminded him.  "Far be it from me to crash in.
Have you thought about dinner?"

"There's bread and cheese and canned soup.  Will that hold you?"

"I'm about as hungry as you are," Luke reminded him.  Ash wheeled back
and forth silently, setting things out of the refrigerator.  "That poor
kid was near hysterical," he finally offered.

Luke turned to stare at him.  "About Nan?"

"In a cross-country way," Ash replied.  "She kept losing control and
crying so much it was hard to know what was really getting to her. She
said she came because I was friends to Nan as well as to her.  She said
all the right things, of course, along with a lot of things she probably
didn't mean to say.  According to her, that forester Bo Sanders who
works for her husband was named as one of the men who went to Nan's
cabin."

"That whole business about Nan and other men is a lot of bullshit," Luke
exploded.  "I was only telling you what Amie was having fits about," Ash
said quietly.  "Come to think about it, Bo Sanders would make a lot
better match for her than what she's got.  And she knows it, too."

Luke set the steaming soup bowls on the table and sat down.  "So Burt
Roberts's young wife is loose in the saddle."

"Burt's gone a lot," Ash said.  "Enough for those two young people to
form a kind of attachment for each other."

That unaccountable anger rose, painful in Luke's throat. Attachment was
one of Ash's pet words...  the pain of attachment.

"Come on, Ash," he said.  "You mean those two young people are in love?
What is there about you that you can't bring yourself to pronounce the
word love?"

Ash dropped a full slice of generously buttered bread into his soup and
began cutting it in careful squares.  "A man can say that word only so
many times before it starts burning his mouth."  Will was gone when Luke
got back to his cabin.  The mugs and wineglasses had been washed clean
and set to dry on a towel by the sink the way Ash had taught Luke to
leave things. Chapter 9

Except where the ground was soft from rain or unusually rough, Ash
Porter stubbornly wheeled himself everywhere.  Although the hearing was
held in a courtroom with polished wooden floors, Ash signaled Luke to
push him down the center aisle.  This request was sufficiently
distracting that Luke didn't notice Will Harrow on the bench across from
them until Ash nodded to him.  Will returned the greeting with a nod. He
neither met Luke's eyes nor acknowledged his presence.

In his office Eddie Dodge had said he wanted a frame to put the events
in.  The word could not have been better chosen.

As the child of a beekeeper, Luke understood frames.  Given the weight
of honey once the supers were filled, each section had to be solidly
constructed.  Standard wood had to be cut down for the frame to fit
exactly on the brood boxes.  Only with the wooden tongues glued firmly
into their grooves, with nails driven in at each corner, could the
builder be certain the frame would hold.

Murder was an enormity that required painstaking 1 workmanship. Nan's
death was trimmed from anguish and horror to discrete factors: when the
body was found, the location of the tree against which her body rested,
the angle at which her nearly severed head lay on her own shoulder. Only
the time of death was not precise: "between three-fifteen and three
forty-five, approximately."  Luke Adams had left Ash Porter's at about
three-thirty to meet the victim at the location marked by a tidy X on
the diagram.  The cause of death was related in medical gibberish that
boiled down to her having had her throat cut. The investigator added
that since Nan Harrow was an active young woman of known strength and
stamina, and since no evidence of a struggle was observable at the site
of the crime, it could be presumed that only an assailant known to the
victim would have been permitted close enough to commit the crime in
question.

If the first side of that frame was opportunity, the second represented
means.  The murder weapon was displayed, a long, slender steel knife
that had been found in the brush a few yards away from Nan Harrow's
body.

The wooden handle of the murder knife gave the forensic specialist an
opportunity to educate the jury on the intricacies of his specialty.
Although the knife handle was clean of fresh prints, it bore a deep
protein stain that matched Ash Porter's fingerprints.  Fairly recent
advances in the field had revealed that human flesh left a protein
impression on porous materials.  Neither the passage of time nor
ordinary attempts to clean the surface could erase this deep stain.
Laboratory examination identified the dried blood along the blade as
that of the victim, Nan Harrow.  The technician pointed out that the
Porter prints could have been of long standing and the weapon either
wiped clean of fresh prints or wielded by an assailant whose hands were
covered.

Associating Luke Adams with that knife was not as simple as the
questioner might have desired.  Ruby identified the knife as one of a
brand she always kept stocked in her general store.  "I always stock
them," she said.  "They take a keener edge than any ordinary knife.  A
lot of folks up here bring home game to dress.  And the price is right.
Folks up here also can't throw money away for a collection of knives.
They want one tool that will cut a buck deer's throat as easy as it will
slice potatoes for soup.  But they do have to replace knives a lot; they
throw them out with peelings or nip the edges off the blades trying to
pry jars open.  There must be a hundred of those knives on this
mountain, half of them buried in compost heaps."

She turned snappish when asked if Ash Porter had bought any of the
knives.  "You expect me to remember every piece of cutlery I ring on
that register?  That's unreasonable."  When pressed, she did say it was
Ash Porter's custom to rent out his cabin complete with kitchen
equipment, and that he generally had to replace a lot of items when the
place changed renters.  She couldn't remember whether he had bought a
knife for the cabin after the last renters, Nan Harrow and her boys,
moved out.

Luke himself, when asked if such a knife was currently part of the
kitchen equipment in Ash's rental cabin, replied that he didn't know. "I
haven't prepared any food there, nothing except coffee.  I've eaten all
my meals over at Ash's."

He was corrected on that.  "Except for the day following Tom Harrow's
death, when you and Ash ate in Bardenville, and the meal you ate out
with Nan Harrow in Featherton a few days later."

Luke jerked his mind back from the torpor he had fought since wakening.
What was this about?  Who had kept track of every move he made?  Who had
seen him with Nan that day in town?  More particularly, why had they
remembered?

"Then you claim not to recognize this knife that was used to kill Nan
Harrow?"  Kill was an ice-water word with Nan's blood bubbling through
it.

"That knife looks like every kitchen knife I've ever seen in my life.  I
didn't kill Nan Harrow.  What cause would I have?  We were friends."

Opportunity had been established, the means was clear, and Luke's own
angry question brought up motive.  "More than friends, maybe?  Maybe you
didn't like other people being more than friends with your woman.

"That's a madman's talk."

"A madman who spends a lot of time, day and night, seeing what goes on
in the woods."

Although Luke tried to choose his words carefully, his meetings with Nan
on the path through the woods came out sounding stealthy and soiled.  A
restless murmur stirred the room when Luke, his jaws aching with
anguish, admitted "carnal knowledge" of Nan Harrow.

The tack changed again so abruptly that Luke, fighting his mind's effort
to escape the entire process, could not find a name for the fourth side
of the frame.

"Where did you go and what did you do in the hour after you were
returned to Ash Porter's cabin under your own recognizance?"

"I poured Ash a Scotch," he said.  "Then I went to my cabin across the
way, hoping that he'd rest a little, maybe take a nap.

"And what did you do there?"

Luke tried to keep the hesitation from his voice.  What was this about?
Where was It leading?  "I made coffee and drank it."

"You didn't leave the cabin for any reason during that time."

"I did not."

"After Sheriff Dodge dropped you at Ash Porter's door and before he
could get to Nan Harrow's cabin, her place was ransacked, just as her
son Tom's had been after the fire.  Are you prepared to state under oath
that you were in your cabin on Porter's land, just drinking coffee,
during that time?"

Luke paused, fighting a sudden rise of fury.  So even the county
attorney realized what a weak motive they had ascribed to him.  Why else
would he feel impelled to add robbery to brace his case?  To Luke's
relief, Will Harrow rose to his feet.  "Coffee and then wine," he said.
"I know because I was there with him."

Luke avoided Ash's angry stare as he stepped down to permit Will Harrow
to come forward.  When asked what time he arrived at Luke's cabin, Will
Shook his head.  "I haven't any idea.  When I heard the report of my
mother's death, I drove straight up there.  It was probably around five.
I waited there for Luke Adams and Ash to come home."

"How did you first get word that your mother had been murdered?"

Luke watched Will's unchanging face with fascination.  He hadn't thought
to ask himself this, but how had Will heard about Nan so quickly? Nobody
knew Will had been coming and going from Nan's.  Whom had he been in
contact with on the mountain?

"A man drove into a station where I was buying gas and told the
attendant.  I used the public phone to call a friend of Mother's and was
told it was true."

"IS that friend in this room?"

"Mrs. Jerry Hodges," Will replied.  Evie nodded from the back of the
room, her eyes on his.

"After hearing this news, you confirmed it, then drove directly to this
man's cabin rather than go to your mother?"

Will nodded.

"Can you explain why you went there?"  Will spoke slowly.  "Because of
what I overheard.  The talker said Nan Harrow's soldier boyfriend had
slit her throat.  Where would you have gone?"

Will took the high ground with that challenge.  The questions went on,
but the tone sounded careful.  "You heard that this man murdered your
mother, yet you went to his home and waited for him.  Didn't you doubt
that he might be allowed to return?"

Will shook his head.  "I knew he hadn't done it.  He had no reason to
kill Nan.  They were friends."

"Mr. Harrow, as far as we know, you have been absent from the mountain
for over two weeks.  You failed to appear at the preliminary hearing
following your brother's death, and were subsequently absent from his
funeral, yet you knew this man well enough to be certain not only that
he hadn't killed your mother but that he would be allowed to go free.
You must have felt very secure about Luke Adams.  When did you first
become acquainted with him?"

"I have the same as known him all my life, through Ash Porter."

"Secondhand.  When did you first meet?"

"Last night."

"You did not meet this man until after you heard he had killed your
mother.  Now you are offering to supply him with an alibi for the period
of time in which your mother's home was invaded?"

"No, sir.  I am not offering to supply him with an alibi.  I'm telling
you I was with Luke Adams from the time he left Ash in his own cabin.  I
stayed there with him until well after dark.  Ash had a caller.  Adams
waited until Ash was alone again to go home."

"A caller?"

"Yes, sir.  Ash had company, and Luke didn't want to intrude."

"Can you give us the name of that caller?"

"That would be secondhand, wouldn't it?"  Will turned to the judge.
"Your Honor, may I make an observation concerning one troubling
statement about my mother's death?"

At the judge's nod, Will hesitated only a moment.  "In reference to my
mother's knowing her assailant, I have trouble with that.  My mother was
strong and agile.  She was also a small woman, slightly over five foot
three and weighing less than a hundred and twenty pounds.  I would guess
that a woman of that size would offer no problem to a hunter accustomed
to stalking and killing full-sized deer."

The attorney did not comment, but turned to his next question. "One
thing further before we dismiss you temporarily, Mr. Harrow.  Can you
explain to the jury why you have been absent from your mother's side
during this difficult time following your brother's death?"

Will sat silent momentarily.  "What you are asking has nothing to do
with this inquiry, but I don't mind telling you.  My mother was widowed
young.  I grew up watching her slow healing from that loss.  I was out
of the state at the time of my brother's death.  My mother begged me not
to come home.  When I insisted, she relented only if I would stay out of
sight and not let anyone know I was here."

"Why?"

"She was frantic with grief for Tom and fear for me.  She said too many
people had already died and I was all she had left to lose."

The emotional climate in the room shifted in some indefinable way with
Will's words, but the frame had been shaped.  In spite of Will's obvious
support and his statements eliminating the robbery angle, the frame was
in place, and Luke was the only one who fit it.

Ash Porter supported Luke's story and named Amie Roberts as the caller
who had come to bring him sympathy for his loss of a dear friend. He
insisted Luke did not have time to reach the place where Nan was found
before the sheriff called.  No, he hadn't looked at the clock; he just
knew.

Bo Sanders stated that he had gone into that tract of woods on company
business.  He took the path as a shortcut to a stand of timber Mr.
Roberts had particularly asked him to check on.  He described finding
Nan's body.  He hadn't realized for the first moment she was dead.  He
had spoken to her before he saw the seepage of fresh blood down the
front of her shirt.  He had turned immediately and run back through the
woods to his car to call the sheriffs office.  He had not seen any other
person in the woods, not Luke Adams, not anyone at all.

Luke looked at the faces of the jury members.  All were strangers to
him.  But they were not strangers to each other.  He was an outsider, a
double outsider really, being only "the boy Ash Porter had raised up,"
and a man gone from the mountain too long to be one of them.  What had
Nan said about the community meetings?  That they were only looking for
someone to blame?  Opportunity, means, motive.  Only the identity of the
murderer was left to be nailed in.  Luke watched Silas Engel rise to
speak and could almost hear the nails being hammered in.  To the poorly
concealed delight of many of the spectators, Engel insisted again that
Nan Harrow had men coming to that cabin of hers at all hours.  He
stabbed his finger at Luke, at Bo Sanders, and finally at Will Harrow,
and would have launched into the Book of Isaiah if he had not been
forced to step down.

With the frame a little askew, Bo Sanders was called back to the stand.
He said that indeed he had occasionally "stopped by" Nan's cabin to
visit with Will Harrow and his mother, of course, when she chanced to be
there.  Sanders was followed by Burt Roberts, who was effusively
embarrassed not to be able to remember telling Bo Sanders to inspect
that tract of woods.  "It's been a busy time," he said.  "While it is
possible I sent him on that particular errand, I pride myself on my good
memory.  I do know I was rushed to make it to an appointment in the
valley, and my head was wholly on that."

When the jury panel filed out for deliberations, Luke rose to take Ash
out into the fresh air.  Ash pushed him away from the handles of the
chair and glared up at him.  "You could have told me Will was there last
night."

"I didn't know whether he was still hiding out or not, Luke admitted.

"He ought to be," Ash said.  "He had no business showing his face around
here yet."

The sun was brilliant beyond the open door.  When Luke paused there a
moment behind the wheelchair, Ash spoke to him roughly.  "Turn me
around, Luke.  I want to go back inside."  Before Luke could protest,
the old man began tugging at the wheels, twisting the handle of the
chair out of Luke's grip.  Luke shrugged and fell into step behind the
chair.

Will Harrow still sat on the empty bench.  When Ash wheeled across to
join him, Will slid down the bench to sit at Ash's side.  Neither of
them even glanced back at Luke as they talked quietly.  Only when the
jury began to file back in did Ash return to Luke's side.

The jury found insufficient indication to bring in a true bill. Nan
Harrow was declared the victim of homicide by person or persons unknown,
pending further investigation.

"Murder," Silas Engel stated in the dead quiet of the room. "Bloody
murder."

Ash sat quietly in his chair as the room began to empty.  Luke's mental
numbness had become physical as well.  He heard whispering voices as
people passed, and he fought for his breath.  The nausea was back. He
heard Will slide in beside him but didn't move.

"That was a narrow one," Will said quietly.

"It doesn't matter that much," Luke told him.  "It doesn't bring back
Nan."

Luke wheeled Ash Porter's chair down the ramp that had been installed
beside the worn stone steps.  With his head bent away from the sun, he
didn't see Linden Porter until she stood before them on the sidewalk,
blocking their way.  She must have already been there when the jury went
out.  That would explain Ash's frantic retreat back into the courtroom.

He was sure Linden would define her outfit as casual, but the crease of
her white trousers would have sliced cheese.  Gold bangles nestled at
both wrists where she had shoved up the sleeves of her loose-knit red
sweater.  Dark glasses hid the anger in her eyes that her mouth couldn't
conceal.

"I'll take that," she said, reaching for the back of her father's chair.

"You'll do no such thing," Ash replied.  "Push on, Luke, before we draw
a crowd."

Linden's tongue moistened her lips swiftly, and she took an extra step
to fall in beside her father.  "I want to know what in hell is going on
up here," she told him.

"Who called you?"  her father broke in.  "Nobody had to call!  The media
has been lapping this up and licking their lips since five o'clock
yesterday.  'Passion Murder on Wooded Path." And who gave them the right
to call Luke ,your adopted son?  That's not true, and you know It.

"I didn't tell anybody you were my daughter, you can rest easy on that."

Tight-lipped, Linden turned on Luke.  "I didn't drive up here to fight
with him, Luke.  I just want to know what's going on.  Two murders in
three weeks, and the Porter name linked with both of them.  If I had
guessed you'd get into a mess the minute you hit this hill, I would
never have let you come up here."

"I might have been a little hard to stop," he told her.  "As it was, I
came in spite of you.  And I didn't get into any messes.  This place was
already at flash point before I came.  That garage fire that killed Tom
Harrow began before I even got up the hill to Ash's.  And no matter what
any damned jury says, I would have died myself before I would have hurt
Nan Harrow."

"Crime of passion," she said acidly.  "What's next?  Another death?
Another fire?"

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?"  Ash broke in.  "You'd really like
that.  Luke is coming home with me to finish out his visit, that's
what's next."

"You what?"  she asked Luke.  "I can't believe you haven't done enough
to satisfy even you.  The glaze of her glasses gave Luke his own face
back, distorted.  "I haven't done a thing, Linden.  I tell you, I walked
into this.  I didn't cause it."

She sighed.  "I just wish to God you hadn't come.  I told you this was a
time warp.

They had reached Luke's car, and he opened the passenger door. Linden
looked down at her father with irritation.  "Put him into the car, Luke.
I want to talk to you."

"I'm staying right here until you leave," Ash told her.

She ignored him.  "Okay, Luke."  She turned her back to Ash and dropped
her voice.  Luke doubted that either Ash or any of the people around
could catch her furious words.  He wondered if he was hearing them right
himself.  "How about an offer you can't refuse?  Leave.  Go now.  If
they ask you to stay, ignore it.  You're not under bond, and if they
slap one on you, I'll pay it.  When you get back to your unit you could
simply tell them something came over you.  Plead breakdown. Demand a
shrink.  Just get out of here.  How much would it take to make it worth
your while?"

"You can't be serious, Linden.  Nobody bought my way up here, and
nobody's going to pay me to leave.  I'm not a murderer, and they aren't
going to convict me for something I didn't do.  As for jumping bond, if
it came to that, I don't have your fine confidence about making end runs
around the law.  All of that aside, why is it worth so much to you to
get me off this mountain?"

"They're not through.  They only blew this one.  You're the only real
suspect they've got.  Ash's prints on that knife pretty well establish
it was from your cabin or his."

"There's never been a lock on either of those doors, Linden, and
everybody on this mountain knows it."

She turned away, her body stiff with anger.  "For God's sake, it's like
you to have come up here and get caught in the cross fire of something
you don't have a pig's idea about.  Once a cocky bastard, always a cocky
bastard.  And all you had to do was stay away.

"Ash was nearly killed, Linden.  Remember?"  She jerked off her glasses,
revealing black eyes closed against light even in fury.  "Maybe I'll get
lucky and you'll be next, Luke Adams."

"Thanks, Linden," he managed to say in spite of the shock waves her
words sent through him.

Luke watched her walk away without even a glance back at her father. The
old man looked up.  He was clearly curious, in spite of his forced,
rueful grin.  "Whatever you two talked about, it looked like you won. He
glanced at the clusters of watchers still hanging along the street.
"Puts on a good show, doesn't she?  That should give the gossips a
little grist for the mill.  She had to be pretty mad to drive clear up
here and back after all these years.

"Maybe she'll stay with friends," Luke said absently, watching Linden
expertly maneuver the sports car out onto the gravel road.

"She hasn't any friends up here," Ash told him.  "I know that, whether
she does or not." Chapter 10

"I dread going back home," Ash said as Luke pulled out onto the road. "I
dread going home, but I sure as hell don't want to sit in any public
place and be stared at.  I wish there was someplace to go where there
would only be strangers."

"Someplace to eat lunch, you mean?"

"Someplace to be.  Just to go and be there and not face up to all this.
Someplace where nobody knew me and I didn't know them."

Flight.  Flight from the pain of attachment.  Linden had suggested
flight.  Her words were still an astonishment in Luke's mind.  "How
about an offer you can't refuse?  Bolt, Luke.  If they slap bond on you,
I'll pay it."

Question: Did that girl have any idea how much a bond for murder could
run?  Or was Porter Properties 1 a printing company specializing in
bills of large denomination?

"There's not much point in my talking if you don't listen," Ash went on,
looking over at Luke.  "What's on your mind?"

"Partly I have been wondering where Will Harrow got off to so fast."  It
was only half a lie.

Ash straightened in the seat.  "Good job, Luke.  I needed just one
little prod to ready me to face that cabin again.  You think maybe he's
up there?"

"You know him better than I do.  His stuff's in your barn loft, and he
said he'd be back."

"That does it.  Let's head home."  His voice held content.  "And I
thought of something else we've got to do.  You need to go through that
book of mine and pick out some shots to take back with you."

"Your bird book?"  Luke asked, incredulous.  "You have to be kidding.  I
wouldn't dream of messing up that book, with your records in it and
all."

"Hell, I didn't mean you'd get those pictures.  You pick what you want
and we'll get copies made.  But you can't wait until the last minute.
Those night shots take extra time to make up.  None of this twenty-four
hour service business with those."

"Then you've got the negatives?"  Luke asked.  Ash looked up at him.
"Not only do I have them, but I can put my hands on any one you want.
Tom came up with the idea of filing the negatives in behind the blown-up
pictures.  It was a good one.  I've spent half my life looking for old
negatives I put in some safe place."

"I already know some of the shots I want," Luke told him.

"The pygmy owl," Ash said contentedly.  "You were always crazy about
those little things."

Luke laughed.  "Crazy to see one," he corrected Ash.

"I never saw one outside your bird guide until I saw that shot of
Tom's."

The flag was at half-mast again in the circle of the drive at Roberts's
place.  "I've never seen that flag all the way up," Luke said.

"That's Amie's doing.  She put it out there.  She had it half-mast for
Tom, too, if you remember.  And Jerry Hodges."

"When did the weight of evidence against me shift?"  Luke asked. "Was it
Engel's tirade or Bo Sanders admitting he'd been in and out at Nan's?"

"Who knows?"  Ash sounded testy.  "It might have been when Burt Roberts
did his usual thing of not standing behind his own employee. But Roberts
has resented Sanders from the first.  It's no wonder Sanders looked
other places for friends, like to Will Harrow."

Luke glanced at the old man's profile.  Was this just Ash's good try at
making him feel better about Sanders's testimony?  "Then he and Will
really are friends?"

"Have been from the first, ever since Sanders came down here. Roberts
never made any pretense of liking Sanders.  It surprised me that Roberts
even rented him that apartment over the stables to live in."

"But you said that's what he built it for, his assistants

to live In., "So I did," Ash said.  "Pull in close to the mailbox and
see if we've got our daily quota of junk mail."  Luke handed him the
stack of brightly colored circulars as the clearing came into view.
"Look at that," Ash said, his tone brighter.  "I wondered why that
Bandit wasn't raising Cain when we drove in.  Will is home."

Will was sitting on the porch steps with Bandit pressed against him
under one arm.  As Will rose and walked toward the car, Luke swallowed
against the transient nausea that rose without warning.  Will walked
like Nan, and Nan was dead.

"I'd almost given up on you two," Will said.  His voice sounded
different.  The level tone of his voice that had so impressed Luke the
evening before and during the hearing had been replaced by a ragged
anger.  Will sounded young and undefended, as young as he actually was,
Luke realized.  Ash heard it, too.  "Got a problem?"  he asked, swinging
into the chair Will pulled out and set up for him.

"I sure as hell do.  How do you go about setting up a funeral?" Luke
stiffened where he stood, but Ash rolled himself steadily across the
clearing, up the ramp, and into the house.  "You start the coffee," he
called back over his shoulder.  "I need to make a phone call before we
rustle up some lunch."

Will had come to the kitchen door with the coffee can in his hand when
he heard Ash on the phone.  He stared at Ash and exploded with a shocked
whisper.  "Ash..."  he hissed.  "For God's sake, no, Ash."

Ash turned his back and waved his free hand to hush him.  "Evie?" he
repeated.  "We'd like you to come over here if you can get loose of
whatever you're doing.  Nan's funeral.  Will needs your help in getting
arrangements made.  You worked with Nan on Tom, and things are to be
handled exactly the same way, remember?  Good!  And, Evie, figure on
lunch.  We're just putting it together."

"Ash," Will howled as the old man replaced the phone.

"I know what I'm doing, boy," Ash said.  "Do you?"  Will blew his breath
out slowly and turned back to the stove.

Evie Hodges was easy company.  Luke kept having to jerk his head back to
the table talk.  Evie's voice was higher than Nan's and her laughter
more open, although nothing like as rich.  He had been so slow to admit
even to himself that he loved Nan.  He knew better now.  Love didn't
come the way it was advertised.  It began with that treasuring curiosity
and moved on to this...  a judging of all other women against that
benchmark and finding even the good things about them not measuring up.

When the meal was over Ash suggested that Luke clean up.  "I'll give you
a hand," he added.  "Will and Evie have some tracking around to do."

They had been gone twenty minutes by the time Luke hung the tea towels
to dry.  Ash wheeled over and pulled down the bird album.  "Take this
over and look through it," he told Luke.  "Just stick a marker in by the
pictures you want and we'll figure out which frame it is later."

Luke grinned at him.  "You wouldn't be thinking of a nap, would you?"

"Get out of here," Ash told him, grinning.  Luke settled with the book
on the daybed for only a moment before remembering.  He went through all
the kitchen drawers a second time before he gave up.  If Ash had
supplied the cabin with one of those murderous knives from Ruby's store,
it was gone now.

Ash had won two hands of pinochle from Luke, and was beginning to fret,
when Will and Evie got back.  "I made Evie come in," Will told them from
the porch, shifting a grocery sack to one hip to push the door open for
her.  "I figured you didn't want her going home without supper this
late."

"Of course she stays," Ash said.  "But you had no call to buy food
here."

Will grinned and went through to the kitchen.  "I didn't say anything
about cooking it, did I?  But there's pork chops and canned applesauce
in here."

"You can take the applesauce back with you," Ash growled, wheeling
toward the kitchen.  "You know that pantry 5 always got the
home-canned."

"There are community-meeting signs stuck up everywhere," Evie said
during dinner.  "I'm worn out on them.  Yet I can't seem to justify
staying away.  Not after Jerry.

"I can justify it," Ash said.  "Sound and fury and signifying nothing."

Will looked thoughtful.  "Then maybe Luke and I will just go together."

"Why should you, after that charade this morning?"

"Because of that charade this morning," Evie told him.  "Ash, this
mountain is past simmering toward a boil.  There's never been so many
hotheads looking for something to do.  The best damper to put on them is
to make them look at Luke here side-by-side with Nan's boy."

Ash groaned.  "We don't have to do that tonight, do we?"

She leaned to touch his hand.  "Not tonight."  She chuckled. "Tomorrow
night."

Ash sighed.  "Luke is going to drive me down to that photo developer in
Featherton tomorrow.  We should be back in time."

"Has the camera showed up?"  Will asked.  "No.  My bet is that it was in
that car along with the tripod and the lens boxes.  But we're going to
have some bird pictures copied for Luke to take back with him."

Evie's face paled, and she turned to stare at Luke.  "You can't be
thinking of leaving Ash!"

"Not until my leave's over."  He wished he had a minute alone with her.
Panic hit him whenever he realized how the time had gotten away with
nothing done about Ash's living arrangements.  Ash liked Evie and was
close to her.  Maybe she could throw some weight in with his arguments
to Ash.  But he knew better than to say anything with Ash right there.

Will's mind was still on Tom's pictures.  "He got really good with that
camera," Will said.  "Ash, do you know right off which negatives have
those good shots of Nan on them?  I'd be happy to pay you for a copy of
them, little ones I could put in a wallet."  Ash nodded.  "I thought
about those.  I can put my finger right on them for you and Luke here."

With Evie Hodges gone, Ash faded fast.  It was clear where his thoughts
were when he asked Will where he was staying.

Will grinned at him.  "I slept in your barn last night."

"Good God," Ash exploded.  "And a spare room right in there with a made
bed."

"That loft doesn't sleep bad," Luke put in.  "I slept there a few times
myself, growing up.

Ash ignored him.  "Will, you can't be aiming to sleep out there again
tonight!"

Will shook his head.  "I was figuring on bunking on that daybed in
Luke's cabin.  I need to get out early, do an errand down in town, and
get back for that meeting."

"You heard me say Luke and I were going to Featherton.  Want to hitch
along, or maybe we can tend to your business for you.

"Some other time, maybe, but thanks anyway," Will replied.

Ash nodded.  "Whatever you say.  But I still maintain the spare-room bed
is a lot softer than that thing in the cabin."

"If you knew what time I plan to leave in the morning, you wouldn't be
making that offer."

Ash looked at him a moment, then shrugged.  "Your pleasure.  Want to
take some whiskey over with you?  I know you boys will sit late."

"Thanks," Luke told him.  "But I'm way ahead of you, Ash.  I set in my
own stores over there."

Will carried his drink back into Luke's living room and let himself down
into the chair facing the window.  "Do you mind if we douse that lamp?
Nan and I used to like to sit here in the dark and watch the woods come
to life.  There's always light there if you give it a chance."  In the
darkness, he went on.  "Mrs. Hodges is right, you know. It's not going
to be easy for Ash to see you go.  Luke groaned.  "That's less than half
of it, Will.  I don't know how I can leave.  I came back here for two
things: to see for myself that Ash was okay and to talk him into making
more sensible living arrangements.  He took my head off the first time I
even hinted at it.  And to tell you the truth, I haven't had the guts or
time to bring it up again.  Got any ideas?"

"Nan and I tried all the ideas we could come up with last summer when he
insisted on coming back here from the hospital.  Like you say, he fires
off at the least suggestion that he can't run his own life. Boy, that is
one summer I'll never forget.  The only good thing that came out of it
was that Nan and I ended up even closer than we were when all hell began
breaking loose."

"All hell breaking loose?"  Luke prodded.  "Ash's accident, for
starters.  And Tom taking it like he did."  He paused.  "Luke, you can't
conceive how far Ash has come since they sent him home from the
hospital.  He was a wad.  Nothing alive but his eyes, and nothing in
them but hate.  Nan and I knew he had no business up here, but when he
wouldn't listen to reason, what could we do but make it as safe for him
as possible?  That's when I put in those ramps and moved things around
so he had no excuse not to take care of himself."

"You keep mentioning only Nan and yourself.  Tom didn't take any part in
all this?  I would have guessed he'd be as involved as you two. Nan told
me the three of you saw the driver who hit Ash the night it happened."

"She told you that?  I'm surprised.  We never talked about it after that
night.  Tom had some event at his high school, and we took him down
without knowing it was Ash who was hit.  We caught a flick.  Tom told us
about it when we picked him up.  You want me to get my own Scotch, or
would you rather contribute to the delinquency of a minor again?"

Luke rose, chuckling.  "You'll forgive me if I forget what a kid you are
on ,paper.  What happened then, that night Ash was hit?'

"Nan barreled her car up this hill like it was a Formula One.  I wanted
to go back down with her to the hospital, but she told me to stay with
Tom.  She didn't know when she'd get back anyway."  An owl called in the
silence, and Luke realized Will had been right.  The woods were coming
alive with a luminous greenness.  You couldn't call it light, but you
could see the trees stand apart.  And there was no moon.

"Nan hadn't been gone an hour before Tom loaded the camera and tripod
over his shoulder and started out the door.  The only way I could have
kept him home was to fight him.  The way he'd looked since hearing about
Ash, I didn't have the heart to take him on.  I heard him come in and
crawl into his bunk about three.  Mom didn't make it until midmorning
the next day.  Ash had lived through surgery; that was the best she
could say.  When I told her about Tom being out, she just nodded, saying
that was probably for the best, that there worse places than the woods
on a moonlit night to deal with grief."

Will fell silent.  When he spoke again, his voice was tight with fury.
"Don't let me have any more Scotch.  But dammit, Luke, there's got to be
an end to this.  Just when I think I know what's going on, everything
switches.  Incidentally, Tom never took a picture that I know of after
that night.  And he had talent.  You've seen those shots.  He had real
talent."

Luke sighed.  "I believe in his talent and I believe he's not to be
blamed too much for going to pieces when he saw Ash brought down.  Just
hearing about it in Germany was like a solid fist in my gut.  I keep
wanting to tell Ash that Tom's wildness was a part of his loving Ash.
That would be a guilt trip to lay on the old man, wouldn't it?

"I tell you, Will, I'm about to choke to death on things I can't say to
Ash.  This business about him getting off the mountain is the biggest,
but I keep running into other black holes in our communication. I never
tried to lie to Ash, because he could see right through me.  We were
close, I mean close.  It was as if he even guessed the private misery
Linden put me through and tried to make it up to me.  Finding out that
Linden had been having that affair with Burt Roberts changed the way I
see her.  Even today when she made that scene in town I kept thinking
how tough it must have been for a mountain girl in love to be thrown out
for a city beauty like Am,e.

"And money, Will.  Ash made his pile back before inflation.  How does he
live?  I've checked with the army.  I could make him a dependent, but do
I dare ask him?"

"That's one you don't have to worry about," Will said, rising.  "I don't
know where Nan lucked onto him, but the lawyer she got to represent Ash
in the insurance hearing didn't pull any punches.  The insurance company
settled with Ash in something that had six figures. Ash has more money
than anybody I know on this mountain and gets less pleasure out of it.
Maybe Burt Roberts is worth more.  He'd be the only one."

"There's another man who must not be getting too much pleasure out of
his money these days," Luke said.

"You mean Bo Sanders?"  Will asked.  Nodding, Luke flipped on the lamp
to pull a pillow and blanket off the shelf for Will.

"Bo just walked into a vacuum with that girl," Will told him.  "If it
hadn't been him, it would have been another young guy who knew how to be
tender."  He paused.  "And just for the record, Luke.  It was me that Bo
Sanders came to the cabin to see."  He spread the blanket to lap over as
a top sheet and tossed the pillow at the end of the daybed.  "When you
hear me splashing around in the morning, just turn over.  I really have
to be out of here like a shot."  Even if Will hadn't disappeared into
the john as he spoke, Luke knew he wouldn't have had the guts to ask him
what the business was.  Nor had he had been able to ask about Nan's
funeral. Chapter 11

The smell of fresh coffee greeted Luke on the porch.  "Come in, come
in," Ash called.  When Luke made it past Bandit to get inside, Ash
nodded with approval to see the bird album under his arm.  "Good.  I was
afraid you'd forget to bring that.  Pour yourself some coffee while I
see what you picked out to take with you.

"No breakfast?"  Luke asked, bringing the pot back to refill Ash's mug.
"We'll stop on the road," Ash said.  "I don't often get an excuse to eat
three whole meals out in a row.  You only got six markers in here."

"Those are the birds I remember best," Luke told him.  "Or the ones
whose songs I know.  Did you remember about the pictures of Nan?"

Ash nodded at an envelope he had pulled out from behind one of the
pictures in the album and laid on the table.  The legend on the envelope
was in Ash's firm hand.  It read: "March, 1984.  (Orioles.  Ruby
throats.  Nan.)"

"All of the pages you marked are daytime color shots except this one.  I
thought you were so gone on owls."

"I am," Luke said.  "That last one there is my favorite among the owl
shots."

"The last one," Ash echoed.  "That's the last roll Tom ever took. He
brought me this picture along with some others that weren't worth saving
when I was still in the hospital.  He lost most of that roll of film,
but this one good shot made up for all the ones that didn't come out."
He studied the owl's eerily intimate expression in the enlarged photo.
"Night photography is an exercise in patience.  I don't know how long
that boy had to wait for some of these shots, especially when there was
little or no moon.  Sometimes he got ghosts when the bird moved or left
before the exposure was long enough."  He slipped a rubber band around
the packet of envelopes and turned brisk.  "Drink up and rinse these
mugs out.  We've got a full day ahead."

The air was fresh and the sky clear.  Smoke from slash piles punctuated
the mountain slopes in both directions.  Luke could almost guess how
long each one had been burning by the size of the wavering plumes rising
into the cloudless sky.  "If this sun keeps up and we don't get another
rain, they'll have to quit this burning for a while," Ash commented.
"But I sure like that smell of wood smoke carried on the wind.  That's
autumn."

If breakfast was a disappointment, Ash didn't mention it.  Luke wasn't
one to look a gift rasher of bacon in the mouth, but if Ash's biscuits
had ever come out that grainy, he would have fed them to Bandit.

The manager of the photo lab was a lean man in his fifties named Patton.
After acknowledging Luke, he turned to Ash without standing back on
ceremony.  "What a shock to hear about Tom Harrow.  He's been on my mind
ever since.  That's a real loss, to the field as well as you and his
family.  And now his mother."  He shook his head.  "I don't see many
youngsters with his natural sense of design."

Ash nodded.  "I've brought some of his negatives to have copies made for
my son.  I think they're all marked."

Patton checked the numbers on the negatives against Ash's list, nodding.
When he came to the last set of negatives, the black-and-white strip
that included the owl picture Luke wanted, he frowned.  "This isn't my
work.  I haven't seen this film before."

"You sure?"  Ash asked.  "I thought Tom brought all the film to you.
"I'm positive."  Patton flipped over the negative folder.  "See? This
was processed by a lab in Sacramento."

Ash nodded.  "Who knows what the boy was thinking about?  He brought me
these when I was still in the hospital.  There weren't but a couple of
good shots on the roll.  You might try developing anything that looks
clear to you.  That fellow in Sacramento might not have your knack."

Patton slid the small envelopes into a folder and wrote the order. "Will
you be in to pick these up, Mr. Porter?  If not, I can mail them out
with the bill enclosed."

"That's a good plan," Ash said.  "We don't get up and down this hill as
often as Tom did."

By noon Luke realized Ash had been serious about this being a full day.
After leaving the negatives with Patton, Ash directed him to the bank.

"I'd like you to meet my son, Luke Adams," he told the cashier. "He's
come in to sign some cards."  At the cashier's puzzled glance, Ash
turned haughty.  "You'll find his name on both this lock box and these
accounts.  I had to set them up without his signature because he was in
the army overseas.  You people have had a power of attorney on file from
me in case Luke didn't get to come home before he needed access to this
stuff.  Check with your bank president.  He was the one who suggested I
set things up this way."

Alone with Ash, Luke protested.  "This is crazy, Ash.

I'm so far away.  Linden is only a few hours away, and she's your real
daughter."

"You get to be a daughter by daughtering," Ash snapped.  "This is my
business, and a man has a right to run his own business.  Do you want to
look at anything in that lock box?"

"Me?  Look at your business?"  Luke asked, grinning

in spite of himself.  Ash ducked his head, knowing he'd asked for that.
"The negatives of those pictures of your mom are in there, if you ever
want new prints."

Luke nodded.  He didn't even know where the old prints were anymore.  A
man doesn't keep black-and white shadows of a forgotten face.

Ash knew a place where they served giant beef ribs that had to be fought
off the bone through a sauce that Luke was sure was going to leave
third-degree burns around his mouth.  "If you think I'm going to eat
again today after this, you think again," Luke warned him.

"You'll eat," Ash told him.  "No problem there."  Luke hadn't walked
that many sidewalk miles since his last leave in Europe.  Every old
building, every corner they turned, had its own story, and Ash knew them
all.  The last stop was the county museum, where Ash showed him the name
Porter on a gold claim from 1850 and waterproof baskets woven by the
Maidu Indians from Ash's mountain.  As he wheeled from exhibit to
exhibit, Ash talked with pride of the Porters behind him: his
grandfather, who had been a prospector, his father, who had worn out on
gold and turned to lumbering.  That ranch above Madrone wove through
every story he told.  It was midafternoon when he wheeled himself out
onto the street.  There, among the traffic noises, he looked up at Luke.
"A man is privileged to be born to land, Luke.  With it comes his
privilege to die there, if he so chooses.  Does that help you at all
with what's bothering you?"

Luke studied the old man's face, those clear blue eyes steady on his
own.  There was no more expression in Ash's face than there was
pleading.  He was asking to be understood, a small enough favor.  When
Luke could not answer at once, Ash tried to help.  "Is it fear for me,
son?"

Luke nodded.

"The worst that can happen is death, Luke, and that's been coming at me
all my life.  Death can't come ugly enough or slow enough to balance
what I've already taken in joy."

Luke dropped his eyes, and Ash groped for his hand.  "That being
understood between us, let's go eat."

Ash was right about Luke's eating again.  He wasn't sure he ordered the
meal for his stomach or to have an excuse to get off his feet for a half
hour.

Even if the sun had not been poised just above the line of the horizon,
Luke would have known it was late afternoon.  At the scaling station,
lumber trucks waited in line almost out to the highway pull-off.  "Those
drivers must hate being backed up like that when they're this close to
being through for the day," Luke commented.

"They're in there and out in a whip if they have a proper receipt," Ash
said.  "Sometimes with improper receipts," he added, almost under his
breath.

"What does that mean?"

Ash shrugged.  "You got any idea how many millions of dollars' worth of
lumber are ripped off federal land every year by thieves carrying hokey
private-land receipts?"  He shook his head, as if annoyed by his own
words.  "Let's not spoil a good day talking about bandits and
low-downs."

The sky exploded with color at their backs as Luke wound up the mountain
road toward Madrone.  A lumber truck on its last lap of the day
thundered past, leaving the car wagging in its wake.  Ash straightened
suddenly in his seat, straining to see up ahead.  "Look at that one," he
said, drawing Luke's attention to a mass of billowing smoke rising over
the trees.  "I can't think of any tract up this road that's been
lumbered this summer.  As they watched, the smoke continued to swell
above the trees dead ahead, doubling in on itself like bread dough being
kneaded.

"Luke."  Ash's voice quavered.  "There haven't been any tracts lumbered
up there.  Step on the gas.  That's up by home."

Cars were lined up at the Madrone turnoff, their left-turn blinker
lights signaling intent to go east up the mountain.  When they reached
the general store, Ruby, with two or three other people, stood out in
front, staring up at the widening cloud of smoke.  Since too many cars
were following for Luke to pause, he pulled into a drive across the road
and jumped out of the car.

"Ruby," he shouted.  "Where's the fire?"  Her first reply was drowned
out by the lugging of the pickup truck that had tailgated Luke since the
Madrone turn.  She cupped her hands around her mouth and tried again.
"The stables," she shouted.  "Up at Roberts's place."

Ash sank back in the seat with a groan.

"What do you want me to do?"  Luke asked.  The question was automatic,
but he knew the answer.  Mountain men stopped for fires. They stopped
and pitched in.  That's why shovels always rode in the backs of pickup
trucks.

Ash's answer caught Luke off guard.  "Just wait right here until that
crowd of gawkers gets by," he said.  "Then let's go home, son. Just take
me on home."

Getting past the fire at Burt Roberts's place wasn't an easy task. By
inching along the shoulder on his left, Luke finally maneuvered past the
crowd of cars and trucks along the road.  He didn't need to look to know
what was going on.  Over the crackling of the painted stables and the
shouts of the fire fighters rose the screams of trapped horses and the
hammering of their hooves against that flaming prison.  Ash whimpered,
cringing in his seat.  "Jesus," he whispered aloud to himself.

Luke watched Ash warily the rest of the way home.  "You all right?" he
asked finally.  He got only a numb nod and the quick pressure of the old
man's hand on his arm.

The house was dark.  Ash waited for Luke to come around and set up his
chair and help him into it.  Bandit whined and twisted in an ecstasy of
relief around the chair as Luke pushed Ash up onto the porch and into
the house.  "Get the light on," Ash told him.  "Get the light on and
pull shut those drapes."

When Ash was under pressure, he always went to his birds.  When he
reached his table, his hand strayed to the binoculars, lifted them, then
pushed them away again.  The sudden pealing of the phone startled Luke.
He reached for it to forestall the second ring.

"Let it ring," Ash said.  "Who needs any more bad news?"  Luke, with his
hand resting on the phone, waited for Ash to tire of the stubborn
repetitive jangling.  "Okay," Ash said at last.  "They win."

"They" was Evie Hodges, her tone wavering toward hysteria, her voice
distorted by tears.  Luke handed the phone to Ash with reluctance. The
old man needed that right now; that was what he really needed.

It was easy enough to guess the other side of that conversation from
Ash's words.  Luke got Bandit's food and filled his dish on the porch
against the background of Ash's efforts to calm Evie down.  He poured
Ash a drink and set it on the table beside him.

"Now quit that crying and get a hold on yourself," Ash repeated. "That's
better.  We just drove by there and saw the fire.  It looked like the
whole stable end was going with the apartment and all.  The house didn't
look hurt yet, but the fire's a long way from over.  Ash paused, and his
tone changed.  "What's that, Evie?  My god, woman, why didn't you tell
me that right off?  Of course I care about Amie's horses, but Will is
different."

Luke looked the question and Ash nodded at him.  "Thanks, Evie. Sure I
understand.  I need to get off and tell Luke.  Okay, then, we'll see
you.

"What's this about Will?"  Luke asked.  Ash shook his head.  "Evie is
full out of control.  Will called her about six when he couldn't reach
us and asked her to pass on his message.  Instead, she carried on about
that Roberts fire for five minutes before telling me.

"Telling you what?"

"That Will wasn't going to make it to this community meeting but we
should get ourselves down there anyway.

"He didn't say where he was going to be?"

"You know Will," Ash said.  He turned away and stared at the closed
drapes.  "What else she told me is that Bo Sanders is missing."

"Missing?"

Ash nodded.  "Nobody seems to know whether he was in his apartment when
the bomb went off or not.  They haven't been able to get in there to
find out.  They had to use force to keep that poor little Amie from
trying to get in there to her horses.  She's with a doctor now.  Shock,
I guess."

"Okay, Ash," Luke said, fighting angry impatience.  "Give me the whole
story Evie told, and give it straight.  Bomb?"

Ash spread his hands and shrugged.  "All this is secondhand, but
somebody was passing just as the end of that stable exploded, shooting
the roof sky-high and flattening the walls in.  Then the fire started, a
tower of flame shooting up.  Whoever it was had his car thrown off the
road into the ditch by the impact.  They said it had to be more than one
of those bottle bombs that we've had up here this summer.

"And Bo Sanders could have been trapped in there?"  Luke asked. "Where
is Burt all this time?"

"Away," Ash reported.  "He wasn't due to get back until tomorrow
sometime, but the state patrol managed to get in touch with him down in
Sacramento.  He's on his way home."

Luke stared at him thoughtfully.  He had only seen Amie with her husband
and Bo, and that one evening she had come to see Ash.  "Does Amie have
friends?"  Luke asked.  "Who's with her?  She can't be there in that
house with the fire still out of control."

Ash stared at him.  "By God, you're right.  Hand me that phone." He
dialed and frowned and dialed again.  "Trust Evie to be hanging on that
line when I need to reach her."  He dialed again, asked Evie the terse
question, thanked her, and hung up.

"Ruby's," he said.  "They must have taken her down there right after we
passed.  Doc Meyers wouldn't go near the fire, and I can't say I blame
him.  Furthermore, Will could have wasted his breath.  They can't be
thinking of holding any meeting down there tonight."

"Will went to a lot of trouble getting that message to us.  "If you go,
you do it by yourself," Ash told him.  "I'm not leaving this place. I
may never leave this place again, the way things are going on out
there."

Luke was barely out of the door before Bandit took a flying leap off the
porch and bolted down the driveway in full cry.  Before Luke could yell
him back, Eddie Dodge's cruiser pulled up in front of the house.  He
must have driven straight there from the fire.  His clothes and hair
were plastered with soot.  Even under the smoke stains, his flesh looked
gray.  Luke ordered Bandit back to the porch and went up to the car.

"Ash inside?"  he asked.

At Luke's nod, he reached over and shoved open the passenger door.
"Good!  I wanted to talk to you alone.  Sit in."

Luke looked at him, unable to see the old Eddie Dodge he had traded
blood with as a kid.  This was a very old young man, harried and
exhausted, his broad face rumpled with conflict.  "Is this official?"

Eddie shook his head.  "Personal."

Luke slid in.  The radio was turned down to only a vibrating rattle in
the car's throat.  "You look like hell," he told Eddie.

"That's where I just been.  The only two horses they saved were a mare
and her foal off in a special stall in the old barn."

"Sanders?"

Eddie groaned.  "They can't be sure until the ashes cool down."  He
shook his head and then didn't seem to be able to stop.  Then, jerking
himself under control, he drew in a hard breath and blew it out fast.
"Roberts pulled in just as I took off.  He was blazing, screaming like a
madman, threatening to sue me and the state of California and to see
your head on a pike."

"My head?  Good God, Eddie.  I was off in the valley all day with Ash.
You want alibis?  I can give you a guy who runs a photo lab, a bank
cashier, and a woman at the museum down there who knows Ash by his first
name.

Eddie was shaking his head again.  "Right off we knew this wasn't any
beer bottle full of gas with a rag in it.  From what the lab men have
dragged out of the ashes down there by Sanders's apartment, this was a
real bomb, a time bomb set for the hour Sanders would be back in his own
place with the office closed.  You told me after the Boniface burning
that any mountain kid could hot-wire a car.  There aren't very many who
don't understand explosives either, but only a guy with special training
can rig something like that baby that blew this afternoon.  You got any
such special training?"

Luke sighed.  "What did you do, check me out with the army?"

Eddie nodded.  "Right after Tom died.  Burt Roberts recognized you there
at the fire.  He mentioned you'd been known as a hothead, and wondered
what you'd been up to.  Like, was it really the army?"

"Nice guy, Roberts.  I guess you told him I was army all right, and in
Ordnance."

"He was getting on my case.  I was establishing that you were on the
level about being on leave.  He picked it up from there this evening,
pointing out that a guy couldn't be very good at detonating bombs unless
he knew how to put them together."

"You said this call was personal."

"It is.  It struck me that you and Ash might take it into your heads to
go to that meeting tonight.

"You mean it's still on?  I was going to drive down to see, but to be
honest, I figured the fire might have knocked that into a hat."

"No way.  But, man to man, I don't want you to go.  For my hide as well
as yours.  There's only me, Luke, and every man on this hill is armed.
We haven't had a lynching since Gold Rush days and I'm not looking to
have one now.  "Lynching!  Good Lord, Eddie.  Everybody on this mountain
has gone bonkers.  What possible reason would I have to blow up
Roberts's barn?"

"Sanders."

'I

"Sanders?  I never said two words to the man.

"You've got to have figured out the only reason they didn't hold you for
Nan's murder was Sanders's admitting that he'd been frequenting her
cabin, too.  And the grand jury can convene and throw that decision over
anytime they please."

"Sanders is Will Harrow's friend, Eddie.  That's why he went there."

"Then why was he so sly about it?  You saw Roberts's face when Sanders
made that statement.  Anyway, what does an educated forester like
Sanders have in common with a tight-mouthed mountain kid like Will?"

"Boy, you haven't changed as much as I thought, Dodge.  How about
Roberts himself?  Doesn't he have eyes in his head?  Can't he see what's
going on between Sanders and his wife?"

"You didn't make any secret of what was happening between you and Nan.
Unlike you and Nan, Bo and Amie have been careful."

"You know it's true."

"That bunch of hotheads down there doesn't care diddley what I think.
It's what they think that could blow things out of my control." His
voice turned whining.  "Come on, Adams.  Your leave has to be almost up.
Why don't you just get off this mountain and go back where you came
from?"

"You and Linden Porter.  That's what she told me to do."  "There's a
first time for everything.  For once, she and I are seeing eye-to-eye."
Chapter 12

Luke let himself back into Ash's cabin to find the living room empty. At
the sound of the door closing, Ash called from the bedroom beyond.
"Who's there?  Speak up!"  A new thread of belligerent panic wove
through Ash's voice.

"It's me, Ash," he called.  "Are you okay?"

"Hasn't a man got a right to crawl into his own bed if he's a mind to?"
Ash challenged him.  "I'd have thought you were halfway to Madrone by
now.

"Changed my mind about going," Luke told him.  "Did you feed Bandit?"

"Hell, no."  The springs creaked irritably.  "I knew I forgot something.
And don't half answer me like that.  What changed your mind about going
to that meeting?"

Luke walked to the doorway and leaned against it to look in.  "I didn't
come all the way from Germany to tramp around on this mountain by
myself."  In the amber light of the bedlamp Ash's brow and nose cast
bleak shadows and his eyes glistened with tears.  "Are you coming down
with a cold?  You look like hell."

"I feel like hell," he snapped.  "But colds are for kids.  Old folks get
pneumonia."  His voice flagged, as if he had spent all his energy in
that burst of bravado.  "It's just some miserable bug."  He pawed at his
cheek.  "A good night's sleep will knock it out of me.  But don't forget
Bandit!"

Either Bandit was ravenous with hunger or afraid he wouldn't empty his
dish before Luke disappeared behind another door.  He licked the dish
empty, shoved it off the porch with his tongue, then came to lean
against Luke on the steps.  The wind was rising, evoking chittering
complaint from whatever small birds clung in the swaying, restless
trees.  The sunflowers dipped and bowed, and the face of the moon was
laced by swift ropes of darkness.

The coming of storm.

Luke buried his hand in the dog's warm, tangled ruff.  Down the hill the
ashes of that expensive stable fire would still be glowing, and Eddie
Dodge didn't want a lynching on this mountain.

What did Luke himself want?  That was simple enough.  He wanted Ash
feeling his old selfstuffing his pipe with Durham, dealing himself
winning pinochle hands, and dropping the level on a bottle of blended
Scotch.  He had told Ash truthfully that he hadn't come all the way from
Germany to tramp on that mountain by himself.  His other reasons for
coming had been his own, not Ash's.  He wanted Ash safe and he wanted
him happy.  Linden was right, Evie was right, even Eddie Dodge was
right.  Ash had no business alone here on the mountain in the shape he
was in.  But Ash was right, too.  Death was going to find him anywhere
he went.  The man had a right to choose that place of meeting.

Luke shepherded his drink as long as he could.  He didn't want to risk
startling Ash again by going in for a refill.  And the last drop of this
drink meant another day had passed.  Another day Nan hadn't lived to
see.  Without wanting to, he looked toward that certain opening between
the trees where Nan used to come out.  What had been driving pain had
emptied itself into hollowness.  It wasn't that his grief was less
agonizing, but rather that his anger was blackening into despair.
Somewhere, Will had to be feeling the same.

But where was Will?

Will was a strange one, a man with a boy's years who came and went
without explanation.  Where would he be, this night before his mother's
funeral as Ash's bedsprings creaked with restlessness and thunder began
to grumble to the north?  The first raindrops fell far apart, large,
heavy drops slamming themselves noisily against the earth.  Luke dumped
his ice on the stairs for Bandit to chase down and eat.  By the time he
got to the door of his cabin, the drops were falling closer together, a
steady drumming downpour, and the northern sky was creased by jagged
light.

The "good night's sleep" didn't improve Ash's disposition.  He was
cross, almost petulant, complaining that something was wrong with his
eyes the way they kept running.

"I'll call Dr. Meyers," Luke told him.  "You'll do no such thing. That
old fool.  He was the one who said I'd never be able to take care of
myself again, that I'd be a burden on somebody for the rest of my days."

"You know he didn't say that," Luke contradicted him.

"Not in so many words, but he meant it."

"But he is a doctor."

"Let him go doctor somebody who has confidence in him.  I caught this on
my own, and I'll get rid of it the same way.  It rained all night,
didn't it?"

"I didn't stay awake to see," Luke told him, starting for the kitchen.
"Want to make a breakfast order or live dangerously?"

"Any boy I raise can cook," Ash reminded him.

The woodbox was filled with lengths of incense cedar wood.  The smoke
smelled like burning pencil shavings.  That fragrance combined with
coffee and frying bacon filled the house with the essence of a winter
morning.  When Luke had the meal all ready to serve, Ash still hadn't
come out of his room.

"Need a little help?"  Luke asked, going to his door.  Ash stirred
against his pillows, shaking his head.  "I must have dozed off there.
Just give me another minute or two.  Whatever this bug is, it's mean."

"How about I bring you a tray?  You could feel a lot better after eating
something."

Ash's face reddened, and he fought himself up onto his elbows. "Just
shut that door.  I'm coming.  I told them when I left that hospital that
if I ever got back to having to eat in bed, I'd elect to starve."  When
Ash finally wheeled from his room and took his place at the table, his
forehead and neck shone from the effort of dressing.  He ate heartily.
Although the food brought back none of his color, it made him garrulous.
He leapfrogged from one topic to another without seeming to expect any
response from Luke.  He talked about his bees and how fond Madison Ford
had been of the rich flavored honey from the plantain blooming.  He put
in strange unrelated statements before taking on a separate tack.  "If a
man knew the ends of things he started, he might never begin," he said.
Luke fought a sense of rising panic as Ash rambled on.  The man was
sick, really sick.  If Ash's voice had not stayed even and calm, Luke
would have sworn the old man was crying. Tears welled steadily in his
eyes, gathering in pools against his lower lashes to spill and run
unheeded down the ridges of his cheeks.  He had to be sick to be
carrying on like this!  But his words flowed on, whimsically switching
from subject to subject.  A peregrine falcon had been sighted in the
woods a couple of years back.  The lumbering in that tract was stopped
by government order to protect the falcons habitat.

Luke watched him covertly, trying to persuade himself that Ash had
lapsed into the innocent comfort of talking to himself.  And who was to
blame him if he did?  Look at how many hours he spent alone, trapped on
this mountain without any living soul to turn to.  Just when Luke
decided the old man had even forgotten he was there, Ash squinted up at
the Seth Thomas and sighed.

"I'm just not going to be able to make it to the funeral.  This business
with my eyes is too much to fight.  God knows I couldn't pay more
tribute to Nan Harrow by being there than I do in my heart anyway. But
tell Will to come around after, if he's agreeable."  He sighed, and
tried to grin up at Luke.  "Never mind whether it's agreeable, just tell
the boy to come see me.  And say it's urgent."

Luke couldn't meet his eyes.  "I'll do that," he assured him. "Naturally
I wish you were coming along, but I think you're doing the wise thing."
He rose.  "While I'm cleaning this mess up, you be thinking of what else
you want me to do before I take off."

The rain had never really stopped, but wavered between falling in a
slow, shining drizzle and pattering in swift, transient gusts.  When the
kitchen was cleaned, Luke filled the firebox of the stove one more time
to keep the damp from the room.  "You sure there's nothing more I can
do?"

"Just be sure Will gets to me, Ash said.  He paused and swiped angrily
at his streaming eyes.  You'll need a slicker against that rain. Take
mine.  I'm sure as hell not going anywhere."

Luke shook his head.  "Thanks anyway, Ash.  I have a parka over at the
cabin."

"And be careful passing those bees," Ash called after him.  "They get
cantankerous in weather like this.  Take care for yourself, son."

As Luke drove out, Ash was a blurred white smudge behind the window.
Nan's funeral.  Luke didn't realize how tightly he had clamped his jaws
until they began a steady drumming ache that hammered in his head.  The
little church was half-filled.  The mingled stench of wet leather and
steaming wool battled against the fragrance of the flowers on Nan's
closed casket.  He passed Burt Roberts and Amie next to the aisle at the
back.  Evie Hodges and Ruby were humped along the front pew beside Will
Harrow.  Will frowned a question as Luke slid in beside him. "Ash is
sick," Luke whispered.  "He wants to see you later.  He says it's
urgent.  He saw the news of Ash's illness nod along the aisle to Ruby,
who frowned and stared at him thoughtfully before leaning to whisper to
Evie Hodges.

Luke studied the interwoven has-relief letters on the facade of the
pulpit, trying to remember what they stood for.  He listened intently
for the groan of the pianist's foot pedals during the opening music.  At
all costs, he must not let himself be conscious of what filled that
casket.

The single-fold paper handed to him at the door helped.  He read the
names of the hymns and where they could be found in the book before
turning to the inner sheet.  Nancy Spencer Harrow.  Born: San Francisco,
California, on March 15, 1948.  Married to William Harvey Harrow in
1964.  Luke felt Will's shoulder tighten beside him as the minister rose
and began to talk.  What could that man, or any man, say about Nan
Harrow that his mind needed to receive?  He retreated into the numbness
of torpor, a mindless waiting for the end of the end of all this.

The sudden shuffling of feet and stirring of bodies against rising
strains of music brought Luke back from his withdrawal and to his feet
simultaneously.  He stood behind Will through the handshaking and tears.
He heard a wordless sibilance as Evie Hodges and Ruby conferred in
whispers.  He tried not to watch the passage of the pallbearers along
the aisle.  "Tell me about Ash," Will said as the car wound along the
road to the cemetery.

"It looks like a severe cold, but it hit fast and hard after we got home
last night.  He seemed fine all day in town but collapsed when we got
home," Luke told him.  "His eyes are drowning him, and he got dressed
with stubbornness instead of strength."

Will nodded.  "Had the fire started at the Roberts stable when you got
home?"

At Luke's nod, Will turned to stare out the window.  "I have a feeling I
know what he wants to see me about.  Sooner or later all of this had to
get to him."

The woods beyond the cemetery fence glistened with rain.  Above the pale
yellow of tarweed blossoms and the reddened berries of poison oak, dark
clusters of wild grapes hung from vines tangled in the branches of a
manzanita.  A canopy had been arranged to cover the second grave in a
large plot at the north end of the cemetery.  The first grave had not
settled yet; nor was a headstone in place.  Tom.  "A mother watches over
her children."  Only a handful of people followed the hearse clear out
there in the rain.

Luke heard Evie's whispered explanation to Will at his side.  "We had
lunch ready, Will, Ruby and me.  She isn't here because she's taking the
food on up to Ash's.  That's all right, isn't it?"

"You didn't need to do that," Will murmured.  "People need things to do
what they can do."

"But Evie," he protested.  "I can't stay.  I have things I have to do."
He paused, then touched her arm.  "You will understand if I have to
leave right off?"  She nodded, covering his hand with hers.

The service was short, with the minister's words muffled and mercifully
indistinct.  Luke closed his eyes tightly against the mechanics of
burial, against the waves of pain that battered like the rain hammering
against the canvas canopy above his head.

The screech of brakes beyond the iron fence brought Luke's head up with
a start.  He turned to see Ruby's car shudder to a stop in the middle of
the road and the door burst open.  Ruby leaped out.  In her haste she
stumbled on the wet gravel and fell to her knees before dragging herself
back up by clinging to the open car door.  All the while she was
wailing, a high keen cry that vibrated in the dense air. She ran
awkwardly toward the canopy with both arms up, her hands flapping in
futile, frantic motion.  She ran without regard for the neat paths
gardened between the graves.  Instead she plunged awkwardly across the
sodden earth, stumbling over grave markers and dodging headstones, her
face twisted in horror.  She was within yards of Luke when her wail
found words.  "Luke," she cried.  "For the love of God, come.  The bees,
Luke, the bees."

For the length of a breath he was rooted.  Then Will was dragging him
toward Ruby across the giving earth.  No, he heard himself shout
silently.  No.  No.

Then she was close to him, with her hair pasted down by rain, her eyes
wide with shock above a slack mouth.  She gripped his arms fiercely,
apparently unconscious of the flow of mingled blood and mud escaping
through a rent in her stocking.  "Dead," she moaned.  "The bees got Ash
and he's dead."

Lifting her muddy hands to her face, she began to tremble wildy. "Dead,"
she moaned.  "Ash Porter is dead."

Luke tried to speak to her, to protest her hysterical words. Instead,
his breath only produced deep, agonizing sobs.  Will seized him by both
shoulders, his hands bracing him, hands like Nan's, square and flat and
strangely childlike.  Those hands were icy to Luke's touch as he gripped
them to steady himself on the spongy earth.

Ash.

Will drove Luke's rented car, leaving his own there near his mother's
grave.  Evie followed in Ruby's car with Ruby, now helplessly weeping
beside her.  As they passed Maude's Place in the middle of Madrone, Luke
heard the whine of a siren on the highway road.  "CB," Will said
quietly.  "Somebody has reached Dodge on a CB."

CB.  Bo Sanders had run back through the woods to his car to call in on
his CB that Nan Harrow was dead in the woods with her throat slit.
Somebody has reached Dodge on a CB.  Ash.

Eddie Dodge was just stepping out of his cruiser when Will pulled into
the drive.  The gas-delivery truck had stopped at an odd angle, short of
the tank holder.  The gas attendant was running toward Dodge, shouting.

When Luke stepped from the car, both men fell silent, staring at him.
Bandit's hoarse, frantic barking sounded from inside the rental cabin,
accompanied by the steady banging as he hurled his body against the
inside of the door.  Ash's wheelchair had rammed the first beehive,
knocking the brood chambers and supers off the supports.  A cloud of
furious bees still circled and dived at Ash's wasted body, which had
curled in on itself like a blasted fetus between the arms of the chair.

"Do something," Dodge shouted at Luke.  "For God's sake, do something."
As he spoke, he backed from a plume of bees swaying toward him.

Will was faster than Luke getting through the cabin.

He had the first smoker fired and was working on the second when Luke
made it to the bee room.  "Gear," Will called to him.  "Get on some
gear.

Luke shook his head.  "We'll stay together."  Dodge and the gas man had
both taken refuge inside the cruiser, Dodge barking into his radio.
Moving slowly in tandem, Will and Luke approached the boiling swarm,
layering the air ahead of them with clouds of gray smoke.

Piles of the dead bees circled Ash's chair, a ring of gold on the dark,
drenched earth.  Luke heard Will curse and stamp as a bee got his ankle.
Carefully, still working the smoker with his right hand, Luke tugged at
the wheelchair to pull it away.  The brakes were set.  A shiver of
horror stirred the hair along his spine as he released the brake and
slowly dragged the chair back up the hill.

"He must have lost control of that thing and it rolled down there," the
gas man was saying.

"No," Luke cut in, his voice uneven with fury.  "He was sick, too sick
to leave that cabin.  And look at those gouges cut in the wet ground. He
was pushed down there, deliberately pushed.  The brake was locked. He
must have locked those himself, trying to hold himself back. And
Bandit...  there's no way Ash could have locked that dog up like that;
nor would he.  Somebody pushed Ash there, letting the bees do their
dirty work.

Eddie Dodge stared at him and at the cabin where Bandit's frustration
had given way to a mournful howl and sporadic hopeless scratching. Dodge
glanced toward Ash's house.  "Everything okay up there?"

"I didn't look," Luke said, kneeling beside Ash's chair.  He reached
toward Ash's staring blue eyes overcome by a terrible wounded
tenderness.  Dodge's quick admonition stopped him.

"Don't touch him.  It's bad enough you had to put your hands on that
chair."

As Luke straightened and turned to stare at him, he saw the drive
filling with cars.  As in the woods with Nan, his instinct was to run.
Will's hand was firm on his arm.  "We'll look at the house," Will told
Dodge, turning Luke away from the staring eyes of gapers who were
getting out of their cars to approach warily, beyond the still-whirling
anger of the bees.

Whoever had ransacked Ash's cabin had been methodical and probably
swift.  Luke, knowing Ash's fetish for tidiness, could tell immediately
where the intruder had searched.  Dodge waited in silence, watching
Luke's careful progress through each room.

As Luke returned from the kitchen, Dodge draped his handkerchief over
his hand to pick up the severed end of the telephone cord from the floor
beside Ash's table.  A siren sounded from the road.  "That'll be the
people from the mortuary," Dodge said.  "See if you can make me a list
of everything that's missing.  I'll be right back."  He paused in the
door, his jowls swelling a little from the tightening of his lips.
"Sympathy, Adams," he said.  "I know you two were close.

Will had stood stiffly in the door throughout the whole operation. Luke
turned to him helplessly.  "Tom's cabin, then Nan's, now this. What in
the name of God are they looking for?"

"First let's see what they took," Will suggested.  Ruby and Evie Hodges,
carrying a basket and a box, appeared, indecisive, in the doorway.
"Maybe we should take these to my place?"  Ruby suggested.

"How about Luke's cabin?"  Will asked.  "I thought I might stay here
with him tonight."  Ruby looked doubtfully across the clearing. "That's
on the other side of them bees."  Then, remembering, she began to cry
again.  "Ash," she said weakly.  "Ash Porter."

Luke took the food containers from her and nodded for Will to hold the
door.  Carefully avoiding the scene at the back of the ambulance, he
circled the hives and opened the cabin door.  "Down, Bandit.  Sit," he
hissed as the dog leaped for him.  Bandit dropped to the floor with his
head between his paws.  Once his hands were free, Luke knelt to the dog,
whose rib cage swelled and collapsed in painful rhythm under his hands.
"Good Bandit.  Fine Bandit," he murmured.  He broke without warning.  He
buried his head in the dog's ruff and cried like a child.  Only when the
ambulance siren began again, warning the crowd back from the road, did
he rise, splash his face with water, and go back to Ash's violated
cabin.

Will was reciting the list for Eddie to write down.  "The Seth Thomas
clock was very old and valuable," he told Dodge.  "The binoculars."  He
paused and looked up at the bookshelf.  "An album of bird pictures."

Luke, in deference to Dodge, covered his hand to pull open the washstand
drawer.  "Wallet," he said.  "Ash kept it in here."

"Was he in the habit of carrying a lot of money?"  Will shook his head.
"He used to, but gave it up after the accident.  Mostly he worked on
credit and cashed small checks with Ruby."

"Checkbook?"  Dodge asked.

Luke looked into the drawer again.  "That's gone, too."

"Robbery for sure."  Dodge nodded, closing his book.

"I need to follow that ambulance down to Featherton.  I put a call in
for Doc Meyers.  Anything gone from your place?"  he asked Luke.

"With that dog in there?"  Luke asked.

"Somebody had to put that dog in there," Dodge reminded him.  "Like you
said, it wasn't anything Ash could have done for himself." Chapter 13

Evie Hodges knelt in front of the kitchen stove in Luke's cabin. "I
guess I don't know how to light this oven, she admitted.

Luke stared at her and the casserole of fried rabbit in her hands. "I
don't think anybody wants to eat," he told her.  "I couldn't possibly
think about eating now.

She looked up at him, her face darkening with annoyance.  She tightened
her lips, deepening the dimples that flanked her mouth.  "Then just
don't think about it and do it, Luke Adams," she said.  "You have to let
people do what they can do.  This is all Ruby and I can do, and you just
better be graceful about it."

He stared down at her a moment, overwhelmed by a rush of affection
toward this woman he barely knew.  He knelt and lit the oven jet.  "You
sound just like Ash, you know," he told her.

"Thank you."  Her voice came subdued, wavering close to tears. When she
rose, she shook herself in a determined way.  "By the time that gets
warm and the table is set, Ruby will be back."

"Wasn't she just going to take Will down to get his car?"

"And check on her store," Evie replied, taking the cover off a bowl of
potato salad garnished with circlets of sliced green pepper.  "She left
her cousin in charge of things.  Think I should start coffee?  Will told
me twice now that he's not going to be able to linger."

"I can make coffee," Luke told her.  What had Ash said only this
morning?  "Any boy I raise can cook."  He practiced breathing evenly for
a moment before rinsing out the pot to put it to boil.

Ruby got back first.  The cabin air was fragrant with the smell of hot
food when she pulled into the drive.  She cut a wide circle around the
hives to make her way to the door.  She thrust a brown paper sack at
Luke and nodded briskly.  "Dodge is going crazy with the phone out up
here.  He wants your help in contacting Linden Porter."

Linden.  Luke groaned.  Ash's daughter hadn't crossed his mind.  "I
don't have an address," he told Ruby.  "Only a number."

"You don't know where she lives?"  He shook his head.  "I wrote to her
from Germany 'to a box number in San Fransisco.  She wrote back and gave
me a number to call when I got into San Francisco.  There wasn't any
return address on her letter."  He fished for his wallet and pulled out
a three- by five inch lined card half filled with numbers.  "Dodge may
not be able to reach her tonight.  I got an answering service the first
time I called.  She's got her own company, you know."

Ruby's eyebrows rose and fell again without comment.  "I'll call this
down to him," she said.  She hesitated in the door.  "The coroner s
inquest showed that Ash died as a result of the bee stings all right.
Dodge said to tell you we all need to be at that preliminary hearing
tomorrow at ten."  She caught Luke's steady glance and shrugged. "That's
probably because the house was robbed, too.  And Dodge told me they
still haven't found a trace of that Bo Sanders and nobody's seen him
since the fire."  Will drove up as she walked toward her car.  They were
both inside within minutes.

"That was fast," Luke told them.  "Come on in, Will.  Your coffee's
practically poured."

"Fast is right," Ruby said.  "I don't know how people lived up here
before we got those citizens-band radios.  Sometimes I think we have
more of those things than we have cars.  But they are a godsend to a
woman alone.  Open that sack I brought you.

The Scotch was Teacher's, Ash's brand.  Evie coughed on hers but
swallowed it anyway.  Ash was alive in the room for Luke as he raised
the glass to his lips.

Luke tried for a private moment with Will without success.  Will excused
himself within the hour.  "Funeral business, I guess," Ruby said,
clearing away the food.

"Possibly," Evie replied, her eyes on Luke.  "You weren't around when
Ash and I planned this funeral, were you?  If you know about that plot
down there, just stop me.

"I don't," Luke said, not sure what she was talking about.

"Ash bought that big cemetery plot, room for six graves, right after he
got home from his accident, figuring he would be the first to need it."
She stopped a moment before going on.  "It was like he saw all this
coming.  He insisted Nan bury Tom there, and now she's beside her boy."
Evie looked up at Luke.  "I don't want to talk about this either, Luke,
but you needed to know before making other plans."  Luke nodded.  He did
need to know that, and Linden as well.

Ruby left soon after to mind her store.  Evie stayed until dusk. She
clearly kept hoping Will would get back, but finally gave up on that.

The bees from the broken hive had swarmed in the crook of a dogwood tree
a few yards west of Luke's cabin.  Luke watched their restless
turbulence from the window as the dark sifted into the woods.  Ash was
not over there in the cabin readying to ring the bell to summon him
home.  For as long as he could remember, Ash Porter had been the pivot
of his life, the solid center around which he had bundled himself, like
the swarm hiding their necessary queen deep inside their noisy turmoil.

Nan.  Ash.  What was left?  Linden, who was less than a sister, and
Will, who was more than a friend.  Will was twenty.  Over and over Luke
had to remind himself that Will Harrow was only twenty.  Will was
twenty, and suddenly, in the space of less than a month, without a
family, as alone as Luke himself.

Time slowed to a crawl.  He walked through the bleak, ravaged rooms of
Ash's house and got food for Bandit.  The dog ate mechanically, then
returned to his place on the porch.  When Will still didn't come, Luke
whistled for Bandit and walked the wet, fragrant woods until his pants
were drenched to the knee and his boots sodden.  He had gone to bed, but
not to sleep, when he finally heard Will open the door.

"You aren't going to wake anybody," Luke called to him.  "Go on and
switch on the light."

"I'm waiting for you to offer me a drink," Will replied as the room
flooded with light.  He dropped on the daybed as he spoke and sighed
heavily.  With the drink in his hand, he reached for the light switch.
"I got away with that order pretty slick.  I'll go for another.  Could
we just talk in the dark?"

"I've been thinking about you, Will," Luke admitted.  "What are you
going to do now?  Is there more family?  Nan must have parents
somewhere."

"She had trouble with her folks early," Will said.  "She never told me
what it was about, never even mentioned them, but she was only sixteen
when she married my dad.  I always figured those two things fell
together."  He paused before going on.  "Then she was a widow with two
sons to raise by the time she was my age."

"How did all of you live?"  Luke asked.  "Nan didn't work, did she?"

Will shook his head.  "My dad was in construction and well-insured. She
also got some kind of a pension as well as social security.  When I got
old enough to think about things like that I figured she moved us up
here partly because the living was cheaper.  We never went without
anything, but she never threw money around either.  None of us ever did
except Tom, and that was only this past summer."  He paused.  "What am I
going to do?  I haven't worked that out in my mind yet.  Sooner or later
I'll have to leave the mountain, I guess, but there's nowhere I really
want to go."

"Anything you really want to do?"  Will was silent a long time. "Go to
school, maybe.

I was fairly good at school.  Have a machine shop of my own.  Raise
bees."  The pause was brief.  "Get the bastard that wiped out the three
people I cared most about."

There was no answer to that.

With the lamp out, the moon streamed in through windows, tinting the
interior of the cabin a pale, eerie green.  From the next room Luke knew
that Will was still sleepless, too.  "What in hell are they looking
for?"  Luke asked.  "Tom's place, then Nan's, now Ash's.  What are they
looking for?"

"When we know that, we'll know who killed them," Will replied.

Every soul Luke knew in Madrone came to the preliminary hearing. Eddie
Dodge, standing with Sheriff Meadows and the county prosecuting
attorney, had already stained his shirt with sweat halfway to his waist.
For Luke the room was a roll call of mixed memories.  Burt Roberts and
his stiffly beautiful Amie, Rick Boniface and his wife, Maude from the
restaurant, and the gas-delivery man who had been the first to chance on
Ash Porter's body.  Ruby, of course, and Evie Hodges, who had ridden
down the valley together.  Will had insisted on bringing his own car.

Then there was Linden Porter.

Linden sat alone on a bench.  That was ridiculous.  She wasn't sitting
alone.  How did she manage to create enough personal space around
herself to render the family at the end of the bench functionally
invisible?  She was a study in stylish grief, from her shining hair to
those incredible ankles and fine, long feet, all gleaming black.  She
had to have invested in the linen suit before being notified of Ash's
death, but it could have been tailor-made for this appearance.  The
long-line blazer and flowing pleated skirt completely matched the shaded
glasses that hid her eyes.  The only relief was a luminous off-white, a
narrow satin scarf separating the jacket from her smooth throat, and
pearl earrings half hidden under the fall of her hair.

To look at those present was to evoke the missing.  Nan, Ash, and,
strangely enough, Bo Sanders.

The coroner's report had nothing new to add.  Deputy Coroner Dodge had
apparently rehearsed his statement.  He then called on the officiating
physician, Dr. Meyers, who testified that while Ash Porter's face and
hands had been stung several hundred times, the number of stings was
irrelevant.  One or two stings would have caused the physical reactions
that killed him, given his established sensitivity to bee venom.

The county attorney had blossomed under the renewed light of publicity.
His face was flushed with vigorous color, and Luke decided, judging from
the attorney's stalwart posture, that someone had fused a poker to his
spinal cord.

The gas-delivery man, having arrived first on the scene, was called
first to the stand.  His work sheet showed his time of arrival at the
Porter ranch at 11: 37 A.M.  Upon seeing Ash Porter in his wheelchair in
the center of that furious "gang of bees," he had stopped his truck and
sent out a call for Deputy Sheriff Dodge on his truck radio.  He got the
sheriff right away, but before Dodge could make it there, Ruby pulled
into the drive.

He guessed her arrival as about 11:45.  She had started to get out of
the car, seen Ash, and scrambled back in, screaming.  She was "out the
drive and gone" four or five minutes before the deputy arrived.

Luke Adams and Evie Hodges, along with Ruby, had come immediately after
Dodge got there.

On the stand Luke separated his mind from everything but the careful
recitation of the events of the morning.  He and Ash had spent a long,
exhausting day in Featherton.  Ash had been visibly upset by the fire at
the Roberts stable and gone to bed almost immediately after having his
supper.

"Did it surprise you that Ash Porter decided not to attend Nan Harrow's
funeral, given the long friendship between them?"  the attorney asked.

"I was surprised but also relieved," Luke told him.  "He was obviously a
sick man.  His eyes ran constantly, and he was really too weak to leave
his bed to dress.  Getting to the breakfast table was an act of painful
effort."

"No one else saw him in this condition?"

"No one else was there."

"Do you have a theory about how this man, almost too weak to dress,
managed to get outside to lose control of his wheelchair and run into
that bee colony?"

"It could not possibly have happened that way," Luke told him. "When I
tried to pull the chair away from the attacking bees, the brakes-were
locked.  Somebody had to push him down that hill.  You could tell that
from the deep grooves his wheels had cut in the wet ground."

"You are saying that Ash Porter's death was not an accident, but
murder?"

Luke caught his breath.  "It had to be that way."  Deputy Dodge was
called back to the stand.  He corroborated Luke's testimony on the
presence of the deep imprints of the wheels.  He admitted that the
ransacking of the house was suspicious, as well as the fact that
Porter's dog had been locked away and the telephone line cut.  In spite
of all that, it was difficult to justify a conclusion of possible
murder.  Dodge's own theory was that after the intruder had cut off the
phone access and ransacked the cabin, the old man made an attempt to
reach the other cabin to use the phone to summon help.  The wheelchair
could have gotten away from Ash on the slope of land between his house
and the bee colonies.

"Your Honor," Luke put in, rising from his seat.  "Ash knew the phone in
the rental cabin was not in service."

A wave of audible whispered opinions swept the room following these
statements.  In the midst of that babble Linden Porter rose and asked
permission to make a public statement.

The judge studied her a moment.  "The court has been informed that you
were not present either at Nan Harrow's funeral or at your father's home
during the time period in question."  He peered at his notes.  "My
information is that you were contacted in San Francisco by telephone
several hours after your father's body was found."

"That's true, Your Honor," she replied.  "But in the hours since
receiving that call, I have thought of nothing except my father's death
and the events leading up to it.  Only this morning I have come upon a
number of things that could have had a bearing on his tragic end."

At the judge's nod, she took the stand.  The arrogant manner Luke
remembered had been replaced by an attitude of appealing vulnerability.
Academy Award performance, right down to the neatly crossed black silken
ankles.

"I would like to state at once that I agree with Luke Adams's opinion
that my father was murdered.  In a way I even feel responsible." The
gavel struck at least three times before she went on.  "I should have
tried harder to keep this man away from my father."

While the judge warned the crowd in the hearing room to maintain
silence, she looked down at her hands in her lap as if she found her
testimony painful to give.

"Luke Adams, who was my foster brother, had been away in the army for
ten years.  In all that time he had not returned even for a single
visit.  I might add that my father and I had a severe difference of
opinion four years ago that alienated us from each other but did not
diminish my concern for him.

"My father was involved in a terrible accident this past May. After
hearing of my father's accident, Luke indicated his intention to come
home.  My father requested him by letter not to come.  I, too, made
every effort to dissuade him.  When he insisted on coming anyway, I met
with him in San Francisco and tried again to talk him out of it."

The judge leaned forward.  "What was your objection to your foster
brother's visiting your father?"  Linden bent her head slightly.  "My
father has never been a genial man.  I had been led to understand that
he has nourished a seething bitterness since his accident.  My foster
brother has a long history of being hotheaded and contentious.  A lot
was going on in the area around Madrone, Your Honor, fires that
suggested arson, bombed cars, a great deal of civil unrest.  I didn't
feel that my father needed a fiery-tempered young man like Luke to
encourage his already very public anger."  Her pause was heavy with some
kind of emotion.

"You may proceed."

"I failed to dissuade him.  Before Luke Adams even visited my father,
another bombing with a death occurred.  Within forty-eight hours Luke's
car was seen pulling away from the fired home of Rick Boniface and his
family.  That was only the first event.  He has since been under
suspicion in the death of a woman with whom he was having a
relationship.  I went to the mountain and tried again to persuade him to
leave.  I even offered him money to go.  Apparently it wasn't enough."
She sighed and shrugged.  "Through all this I had no fear for my father.
I think I trusted too much on what I thought was a deep bond between him
and his foster son.  ' She turned that lovely, controlled face up to the
judge.  "I was wrong, sir," she said.

"This morning, with a view to making arrangements for my father's
interment, I contacted both his banker and his attorney.  To my
astonishment, my father had changed his will, leaving the Porter family
ranch to Luke Adams.  All his bank accounts, his safe-deposit box, and
his insurance policies had been made over to Luke Adams as beneficiary.
I want to remind you that Luke Adams showed no interest in my father's
companionship as long as Ash was living humbly on the proceeds of his
life savings and his small cash crops.  I would also add that, following
my father's accident, a settlement of around a hundred thousand dollars
was made on him because of the permanence and extent of his injuries.
Through those years when my father scraped on very little, Luke Adams
managed to become a first sergeant in the army, not a position that
provided him with any grand affluence."

Luke listened in horror.  This could not be happening.  Linden was cold.
Linden was bitter against Ash.  But what had inspired this malicious
attack?

"I think my father was murdered, and I think the identity of his
murderer is perfectly apparent.  No one but Luke Adams saw my father the
day of the Harrow woman's funeral.  No one else saw my father sick or
had heard of his illness.  It would have been simple enough for this
their to my father's estate, having firmed all the legal transfers, to
push Ash into a place where death was inevitable."

She began to cry, seemed to make an effort to control herself, without
success, and was excused from the stand.

The room exploded with sound.  Without trying to restore order, the
judge announced a recess, during which he retired to his chambers with
the county sheriff, Deputy Sheriff Dodge, and the county attorney.

Luke felt Will trying to catch his eye, but didn't turn to him. What was
the use?  Linden had sewed him into a shroud as neatly as if he were
already dead.

"Why?"  Will whispered urgently.

Luke shook his head.  "If I knew that, I could probably get bond set."

Luke's prediction was painfully accurate.  The court ordered Luke Adams
held without bond on suspicion of complicity in the death of his foster
father, Ash Porter, pending further investigation. Chapter 14

Luke's first visitor in jail was Will Harrow.

Will's eyes, so much like Nan's, were thoughtful on Luke's face. "How
much of this did you know?"

"That Linden was a bitch?  That was no secret.  But I didn't know how
conniving and malicious she was."  Will shook his head.  "All that about
Ash's property."  Luke shook his head.  "I knew I was on the bank
accounts and the safe-deposit box.  Ash dragged me in to sign cards at
the bank on those.  The will was news to me along with the business
about the ranch and the insurance.  Why, Will?  What prompted him after
all this time to disinherit Linden?"

"You didn't see Ash in the humiliation of that hospital.  You can't
imagine how close he came to death and, how he wished for it when he
realized the shape he was left in.  That daughter of his was an easy
drive away all that time, Luke, but she never showed her face.  Not
once."  He hesitated.  "She's right about one thing, though.  That
accident left Ash an angry, bitter man who felt he had a score to
settle."

"Are you saying there really was a feud between Ash Porter and Burt
Roberts's company?"

"It didn't begin as a feud.  It was more an investigation."  Will
grimaced.  "I started to fill you in a little bit about all that way
back on that night after Nan was murdered.  Then I decided I didn't know
you well enough.  Later, when I did know you, things were getting out of
hand so fast I figured that anything you knew could only hurt you.  In
the beginning, I know Nan only thought about it as an investigation. But
she and Ash were both on the prod, Nan because of Tom, and Ash because
of his own accident and Jerry Hodges's death.  I mean, they were on the
prod."

"So that's an expression.  It means nothing to me right now.  Maybe it
would help for you to tell me what Nan and Ash actually did in the
process of being on the prod."  He paused.  "And maybe what you did,
too."

When Will looked at him, startled, Luke went on.  "You can't deny you
had a part in it.  Nan testified at the hearing that you were out of
town on her business and your own.  Ash said you were gone on Nan's
business and his.  Now it must be just your business, Will.  Doesn't
that scare you?"

Will flushed.  "I think by the time they realized how deep we were all
into it, it was too late."  He fell silent as the lawman in charge of
the jail clanged into the area and came to stand at Luke's cell door.
Luke hadn't appreciated how easy Eddie Dodge had been to deal with until
he was handed over to this character.

"Linden Porter wants to talk to you.  "I don't want to talk to her. I
have no intention of ever again exchanging two words with her without
both a reliable witness present and a recording device."

The man looked at him a moment, then shrugged and turned away.

"She was out there talking to Eddie Dodge when I came in," Will told
him.  "Sugar had quit melting in her mouth."

"She's got me in jail for murder.  What else is she after?"

"She's apparently afraid they will let you out on bond.  She told Dodge
her attorney was already at work on breaking that will on grounds of
Ash's incompetence.  She wanted a restraining order to keep you from
trespassing on her father's ranch."

"She's crazy," Luke told him.  "No court in the world would accept that
Ash was incompetent.  And anyway, I have to go back up there.  That
stuff of Nan's is buried up there, and I'm the only one who knows where
to find it."

"Maybe you should tell Eddie Dodge that."

"You don't mean he issued that restraining order?"  Will shrugged. "I
only heard him tell her that he couldn't arrange anything like that
until you were out on bond."

Luke stared at him.  "Until..."  he repeated.  "If Linden thinks my
getting a bond set is possible, then it's a sure thing.  Look, Will, I
need a lawyer, if it's only a public defender.  I need out of here.  I
have less than a week left on this leave.  I didn't come back here to
bury everybody I loved and rot in this jail cell."  Will let Luke's
tirade go on until he finally got tired of repeating himself and fell
silent.  "Okay, Luke.  Never mind the public defender.  It would
probably be some valley type with enough political ambition to be the
county attorney's puppet.  But maybe a good lawyer could get a bond
hearing and spring you out of here."

"Where's the money coming from for a private attorney?"  Luke asked.
"You heard Linden.  She can probably tie up any resources Ash left me,
God help him."

"You forget I'm Nan's their.  Nan wasn't a big spender.

So if this takes it all, it takes it.  There's only me now anyway."

"I can't let you do that."

Will didn't reply, but stirred and studied the toe of his boot for a
long time.  Then he looked up.  "What time is it?"

"A little after twelve," Luke told him.  Will stiffened.  "I've got to
cut out.  I wish we hadn't been interrupted, but this may not be the
safest place to talk anyway.  But now I'm running late.  Listen, Luke,
you'll hear from me.  Cross your fingers we aren't rushing things, but
with you penned up in here, I don't see we have any choice.  Hang on,
you'll hear from me.

"Will," Luke yelled after him.  "For God's sake, don't be cryptic. What
in hell are you talking about?"

The attendant was at the door and Will was gone.

Until the lunch tray was carried into his cell, Luke thought army cooks
were the worst in the world.  Most of the other cells along the hall
were empty except for the previous night's harvest of drunks and
loiterers.  By two o'clock, they had all been disposed of somehow.  By
three he had reached the pacing stage.  He had accused Eddie Dodge of
learning to be a sheriff by watching cop shows on TV.  A fine one he was
to poke fun at Eddie!  When the door at the end of the hall rattled, he
flew to the barred door of his cell like every prisoner he had ever
watched at Saturday-afternoon matinees.

For a wonder, this time it was Eddie Dodge and he was alone.  When Eddie
fitted the key in the lock and swung the door wide, Luke didn't move.

"You didn't let that Will Harrow strip himself broke

to make bond for me, did you?"  he asked.  Dodge shrugged.  "Look who's
looking a gift horse in the mouth!"  he said.  "Come on along with me."
Dodge saluted the jail attendant and tossed the keys on his desk as they
passed the outer officer.  As they started down the steps, a black
Imperial eased into the curb.  Eddie Dodge stepped forward, opened the
door, and leaned in to speak to the passenger in the back seat.
"Sergeant Luke Adams, Mr. Frane."  Then he nodded.  "Inside, Adams."

Frane.  The interior of the car was dark from the smoked windows, but
the man who offered his hand was fair-skinned, probably in his sixties,
and remarkably bald.  His tone was cordial.  "Nelson Frane," he said.
"This isn't an abduction, Adams.  We are a little pressed for time, and
this was the most efficient way to fill you in on what is happening.
First, let me offer my sincerest sympathy on the loss of your father,
Ashton Porter."  Had he ever heard Ash's whole name before? Not that he
remembered.

When Eddie Dodge's cruiser pulled past the car and paused, the driver
eased the big car away from the curb to follow him.  Frane's eyes behind
rimless glasses were intent on Luke's face.

"Thank you, sir," Luke managed to say.  "I'm afraid I don't understand."
Frane nodded and closed both hands on a cane between his knees.  "So our
mutual friend Will Harrow tells me.  First let me assure you that the
posting of your bond was not an act of generosity by Larson and Frane.
We need you as much as you needed release.

Secondly, we are on our way to the local office of the company. Burt
Roberts is expecting us.  We will be joined by the company's attorney,
Adam Bridges.  As far as Mr. Roberts knows, this meeting has been set to
explore the insurance implications of the stable fire that destroyed the
quarters of our company assistant as well as personal property of Mr.
and Mrs. Roberts.  We have asked Mr. Roberts to have his personal
attorney present because of this double involvement."  Luke waited.  "No
questions, Mr. Adams?"

"Two things," Luke said.  "Your phrase 'as far as Roberts knows,' and,
of course, where do I fit in?"

Frane nodded and thumped the cane lightly on the floor.  "Exactly. Few
things come out even in this world, and timing is often vital to
success."  He glanced at Luke.  "My father, who founded this company,
was a faller like yours.  They knew about timing.  I presume I may call
you Luke."  At Luke's nod, he went on, staring straight ahead at the
back of the driver's neck.  "I will begin with the company's concern.
Burton Roberts has been manager here for nearly fifteen years.  Profits
were satisfactory for the first seven, after which a period of
diminished profit occurred.  Since some other offices showed some
parallel figures, due to infestation, fire, or drought, we were slow to
pick up on this.  However, when the company accounting system was
modernized three years ago, computerized if you will, a puzzling pattern
became apparent.  I won't go into the details, but the name of a single
company kept cropping up.  The books showed this company making
recurrent and regular high bids on salvage sales.  An informal audit
also showed discrepancies in the number of decks of prime lumber in
Olson and Frane's inventory."  He waved his hand.  "Let us just say that
a covert audit has been under way for the better part of this year.  In
late May of this year, we enlisted Will Harrow to do legwork in our
investigation.  At the same time, we placed one of our own agents, Bo
Sanders, in this office as assistant manager."  The old man clearly
enjoyed Luke's reaction.

"Spies," Luke said.

"Spies."  The old man nodded.  "Since you're a mountain man like I am,
you realize there are several ways to trap a lumber thief and that most
of them take long periods of time.  With your father's death and your
being stuck in jail, we needed to speed up the process.  It was my
personal opinion that, as Ashton Porter's son, you would exert a telling
effect on this meeting."

The sun was at their backs just as it had been when he and Ash had
driven toward home from Featherton the last time.  The driver followed
Dodge's cruiser up the mountain, past the turnoff to Madrone.  Both cars
slowed as they passed Ruby's general store.  A blue sedan came out of
Ruby's parking area and fell in between them.  "Mr. Bridges is bringing
both Sanders and Harrow with him."

"Sanders," Luke said.  "Then he got out?"

"Sanders was suspicious when Roberts insisted he be reachable in his
quarters the night of the stable bombing," Frane explained.  "He was
with Will that evening."

"I haven't the vaguest idea what you expect of me," Luke said.

Frane's smile was brilliant.  "Be yourself, Luke.  Just be yourself.
This is Bridges's party.  You'll like Adam; he grew up in the mountains,
too."

The caravan pulled into the circle drive at Roberts's place.  The stable
area to the right, reduced to a mass of charred timbers and jutting
debris, reeked of wet ashes and the stench of rotting animal flesh.  The
hanging sign decorated with the silhouette of the prancing horse and the
single word "AMIE" clanked as the wind rattled its iron chain.  A
weaving cloud of swifts pipped and swung around the chimneys of the
imposing house, still handsome in spite of its smoke-blistered paint.

The driver opened Mr. Frane's door, gave him a hand until he stabilized
his cane, and nodded for Luke to follow.  Eddie Dodge was instantly at
Luke's side, his face carefully unreadable.  The dark-haired man with a
briefcase, who had to be Adam Bridges, followed with Will and Bo
Sanders.

Burt himself answered the door.  He stood in the flood of light angling
from two elaborate carriage lamps flanking the entrance.  With the
single word "Welcome!"  he managed to convey sincerity, warmth, and an
almost boyish vivacity.  The word died on his lips as he looked from
Nelson Frane to the group behind him.

"I appreciate your making yourself available at such short notice," Mr.
Frane replied.

"Look here," Roberts said.  "I don't understand, Mr. Frane.  I thought
we were meeting with our attorneys about the insurance investigation."
He looked at his superior in confusion.

"We will have to get to that later," Frane said.  "But in the meantime,
certain events have made it urgent that we discuss conditions in this
territory.  Perhaps I was remiss in not notifying you that these other
gentleman would join us, but things have moved very swiftly."

Roberts nodded, his face flushed.  "This is logical enough for Mr.
Bridges and Sanders, but these other people?"

Frane's smile was genial.  "It's awkward standing out here making
introductions, but I believe you know Luke Adams, Will Harrow, and
Deputy Dodge.  Forgive me, Mr. Bridges, Sergeant Adams."  Luke felt his
hand gripped heartily and nodded at the greeting.

"It is all right if we come in, isn't it?"  Frane asked

pointedly.

The view from the doorway exposed a long formal room on the left. A
slight movement by the hearth caught Luke's eye.  Amie Roberts stood
immobile against the pale drapes that flanked the fireplace.  She was
wearing something flowing in a fabric as fair as her hair.  Her eyes met
Luke's and held them a long moment before she turned and disappeared
from his view.

Roberts had recovered enough to wave his guests into the wide formal
hall.  There he hesitated, his face darkening.  "See here," he said.
"This is completely irregular.  We have a simple problem of fire damage.
It smacks of invasion of my privacy for all of you to troop in here like
this."

"The company office should be adequate, if you would like to lead us
there," Frane said.  "But you have another option.  We can review the
material I came to discuss here in the privacy of this office, or you
can elect to come back to Portland with us and do it in the company
offices there."

Burt Roberts's eyes moved from Frane's face to Bridges and back. "Very
well, gentlemen," he said, his voice low and careful.  "Follow me,
please.  My attorney is waiting in my home office.  This way, please."
Roberts's attorney was on his feet as they entered.  Avoiding his eyes,
Roberts managed the introductions adroitly.  Luke only half caught the
attorney's name as he watched the performers in this crazy charade. From
the moment Roberts opened that front door, tension had begun to shiver
the air.  Once inside the office, it became almost an audible crackle.
But this wasn't tension as Luke understood it.  Hell, he was a mountain
boy, he could smell a confrontation coming a country mile, but they came
open, as flat out as spit in the other man's face.  The army wasn't that
much different.  But this!  The controlled cordiality between the
principals was somehow more threatening than a man's chest thrust at
yours and his fists braced.

Roberts posted himself behind his wide mahogany desk.  Maybe that was
the same as getting his fists up.  "Gentlemen?"  he asked.

Frane nodded to Bridges, who took the chair beside him and opened his
briefcase.  "You used the word 'irregular' about the gentlemen with me.
But as we have discussed before, a number of irregular events have
transpired in your territory through the past months.  Given your long
association with the company, we felt a need to air our problems.  In
the presence of your counsel, of course."

Roberts glanced toward Luke, sitting with _odge beside him.  "It seems
irregular that such a discussion involve noncompany personnel."

"I believe their involvement will become apparent," Mr. Frane told him.
"Let's get on with this.  Mr. Bridges, would you review the pertinent
material for us?"

Bridges opened a leather folder and looked up.  "I would like to begin
by reviewing correspondence from March of this year."  After handing a
sheet across to Roberts, he went on.  "As you know, Larson and Frane has
a policy of maintaining the best possible relations in the communities
where they own property and maintain regional offices.

"This letter came from an area rancher, Ashton Porter.  Although it is
not unlike a number of letters we regularly receive from disgruntled
local lumberers and environmentalists, we did respond to Mr. Porter,
asking for elaboration.  Simultaneously, of course, we sent a copy of
his letter for your file.

"As you might remember, in his letter Mr. Porter accuses the company
lumbermen of marking live trees on federal land as salvage, and having
them cut and delivered to a mill as such."

Roberts interrupted.  "I don't remember seeing such a letter, but the
writer is wrong.  No faller would make that mistake.  They know a live
tree from a dead one."

Bridges nodded.  "Mr. Porter pointed that out in his letter, too. He
also said that work was so scarce and so few local people had been
employed by the company for the past few years that a man with
obligations might 'swallow his ethics' and perform the work as ordered."

Luke felt the tension in the room shiver along his spine.  Only Bo
Sanders seemed oblivious to it.  He sat as he had during the hearing on
the death of Tom Harrow, staring down at his hands, his expression
unreadable.

"Since the territory was undergoing an intensive audit anyway," Bridges
went on, "we decided to send a special investigator down here to
interview Ashton Porter.  Unfortunately, before those arrangements could
be made, Mr. Porter sustained serious injuries in an accident involving
a truck owned by Larson and Frane."

Roberts glanced at Luke, then nodded.  "I know all that and the size of
that settlement.  A terrible thing, terrible.  But what is this about
the intensive audit?"

"Routine in a situation when company profits fall below expectations
over a considerable period of time."

"We suffered drought," Roberts put in.  Frane nodded.  "This was
factored into our numbers.

In any case, as Bridges said, a special audit over the past four years
revealed nothing supporting Mr. Porter's charges of illegal lumbering on
federal lands.  However, other discrepancies did crop up. A check I run
on receipts provided to our company trucks at scaling stations revealed
that many loads of first-class lumber had come from private property
belonging to an investment company in San Francisco. Although the
payments to the property owner were made regularly, none of these mill
payments could be found on company books."

Roberts moved to protest, but Bridges held up his hand.  "Before you go
on, the name of this private company, Porter Properties, intrigued us
because of our correspondence with Ashton Porter.  You had a comment,
Burt?"

Roberts glanced at his attorney, then shook his head.  "We decided to
contact Ashton Porter again, inviting any information that he could
authenticate, to help us clear the company of the charge he was making.
His reply came back as soon as he was out of the hospital and at home.
He offered all the assistance he could give in stopping what he referred
to as the 'rape' of both the forest and the company.  He put us in touch
with Will Harrow, whom we hired to do Mr. Porter's legwork.  Later in
the summer Mr. Porter gave us the name of a driver who reported seeing a
Larson and Frane company truck, fully loaded with lumber, receive a
receipt at a weighing station and drive past the mill where our decks
were being set.  Out of curiosity, he followed the truck and saw the
driver complete a sale at a different mill."

"This is unbelievable!"  Roberts said, his eyes bold on Bridges's face.

"And also unprovable," Frane put in.  "Before our special investigator,
Mr. Sanders, here on site, could interview the truck driver, he was
killed by a rigged bomb in his private vehicle."

As Roberts swung in his chair to stare at Sanders, Luke spoke the name.
He had no thought of the words being heard.  He thought he had only
breathed them to himself.  But he saw Bo Sanders's eyes raised to his as
Mr. Bridges echoed his words aloud.  "That's right, Sergeant Adams.  The
driver Mr. Porter referred us to was Jeremy Hodges." Chapter 15

Burt Roberts started to speak, but his attorney touched his arm. "My
client does not wish to make any comment on this matter without previous
consultation."

Bridges looked at him.  "Are you telling me he has no interest in
further discussion concerning the company's charges against him?"

"Charges!"  Roberts said, only to be silenced by his attorney's glance.

"Charges."  Bridges nodded.  "We have a warrant to detain Burton Roberts
on suspicion of grand theft from the firm of Larson and Frane. Sheriff
Dodge is here to accompany him to Featherton."

"Wait a minute.  I thought Dodge," Roberts began.  "What about Adams?
He's on trial for murder."

"Correction," Bridges said.  "He's charged with suspicion of murder,
pending investigation.  He is out on bond supplied by Larson and Frane."
At Roberts's expletive, Bridges went on.  "It seemed the least we could
do, given his late father's helpfulness with our problems up here."

Roberts looked at Eddie Dodge.  "He's not taking me anywhere."

"Sorry about that, Burt," Dodge said.  Bridges rose, snapped shut his
leather briefcase, and smiled at Will Harrow.  "That's it, Will." Still
smiling, he shook Luke's hand again.  "We will talk later, Adams. My
sympathy on your loss."

Bridges walked with a brisk step that bordered on cockiness.  With one
arm looped lightly around Will's shoulder, he followed Mr. Frane through
the foyer and into the last glowing light of day's end.

Luke tagged along, fighting a sense of unreality about the minutes just
past.  Eddie Dodge's presence and that of Bo Sanders he now understood,
and Will, of course, because of Nan, and Ash's, and finally his own. But
it still didn't make sense that Larson and Frane had put up bond simply
to give him the satisfaction of seeing Burt Roberts arrested for
thieving.  He had started down the drive when he heard Amie Roberts's
low whisper and realized Bo Sanders was no longer walking behind him.

She must have been waiting all that time for Bo to come out. Bundled in
a trench coat with a dark scarf knotted over her hair, she had stepped
directly in front of him, very stiff, straight and tall, like a proud,
injured child.  "It wasn't me at all, then," she whispered fiercely.
"You were just a spy.  You didn't give a damn."

"That's not true," Bo protested.  He reached for her, but she stepped
swiftly aside.  "Listen, Amie.  It wasn't the way it looked at all.  Let
me explain."  The other men had reached the cars and turned to look
back.  Bo leaned toward Amie, his voice harsh with urgency.  "Amie,
you've got to listen.  I can't explain now.  But promise me.  Promise
you'll listen!"

She shook her head, vainly fighting tears.  "What scum you are, Sanders,
what scum.  And dammit, you fooled me completely.  You're the same as
them, all of them.  This was a job to you, wasn't it?  Just another,
lousy, spooky job with fancy perks thrown in!  Look at them! Boy, do you
ever fit.  They don't give a damn either, not even about all the people
he killed.  They just care about the money."

"Listen, Amie," he pleaded.  "Later."  She lost control and sobbed with
her face covered by her hands.  "These last two days I died, Bo.  I
literally died, because I thought you were killed, too.  He could have
killed you, you know.  He tried.  But you, you just let me die!"

Wordless rage burst from Roberts's throat as he plunged through the
doorway.  He moved too swiftly for either Dodge or Sanders, who was
caught broadside by the backward swing of Roberts's bent arm.  Amie's
wail was muffled by Roberts's fury.  "Bitch," he shouted.  "Shut your
filthy mouth!"

Luke lunged automatically.  He caught Roberts's arm, tore his hand from
Amie's throat, and spun him around.  His fist caught Roberts's chin off
center, audibly snapping his head back and forcing a grunt of pain from
Roberts's throat.

Eddie Dodge had the handcuffs on Roberts before he even started to rise.
Amie stood that stiff way, with her face void of expression, as Dodge
installed Roberts, his head down at a painful angle, in the back of the
cruiser.  As Dodge stepped away, Burt's attorney leaned in at the
window, talking intensely.  The group sorted itself out automatically.
Bridges joined Frane in the Imperial as Will motioned Luke toward the
blue sedan, where Bo Sanders had already taken the back seat.  As Luke
passed Dodge, the sheriff looked at him and grinned.  "I knew it, Adams.
It was just a matter of time until you got yourself a fight up here."

Will slid in behind the wheel.  "Come on, Luke.  Let's go.  Luke glanced
back.  Amie Roberts, her hands deep in the pockets of the trench coat,
was staring at the ground as she listened to Eddie Dodge. Whatever he
said seemed to take a long time.  Once in a while she nodded, but it was
clear who was doing the talking.

Finally she looked up at him, nodded in a dull, lifeless way, and
started back into the house.

"Somebody needs to be with her," Luke objected.  "She'll be okay," Will
told him.  He shifted the car out of gear to let it drift down to the
road.  The chimney swifts were either gone or invisible in the darkness,
but the smell of death still layered the night air.

Luke had driven to Nan's cabin only with her beside him navigating the
twists and turns.  So he didn't figure out where Will was taking them
until he saw the dark silhouette of the cabin materialize through the
trees.  Did he want to go into that cabin now that she was gone?
"There's Scotch at my place and some leftover food," he told Will.

"This will do fine," Will replied.

Like Ash, Will seemed able to see in the dark.  He had crossed the room
and lit the lamp before Luke's eyes could find a shape in that dimness.
The furniture was standard for a rented cabin-solla, desk, a couple of
tired chairs.  But the rug was braided in bright whorls of colored
cotton, and the walls decorated with carefully matted photographs of
Ash's cabin, Bandit watching warily from his porch, and Nan.

Luke walked to Nan's picture and stared at it a long time.  The
background screamed spring.  A blooming white dogwood glowed in the dark
woods behind her, and she was carrying lupines as blue as the patch of
sky above the trees.  The details could not have been sharper: the curve
of her throat at the open neck of a flannel shirt, her wide-set eyes
amused at the lens, and her lips making that straight, firm line where
they met.  Tom shot this picture?"  he asked.

"In the good days," Will replied from the kitchen, where he was
clattering a pot of coffee onto the stove.  "That's one of the ones Ash
ordered us copies of."

That was something else Luke had to do, contact Patton and get those
pictures he and Ash had dropped off.  But maybe that was all he had to
do now that Linden had come back into the picture with her attorney and
her threats and her convincing accusations.  Luke dropped into the chair
facing Nan's picture and saw Bo Sanders watching him.

"You realize I am in shock," Luke told him.  "We all feel a little like
that," Sanders replied.  "It's been a long, hot summer," Will said from
the doorway.  From the glance the two exchanged as Bo nodded, Luke
realized how true his own words had been to Eddie Dodge.  These men were
friends, close enough to finish sentences for each other.

"We're still only half done," Bo said.  "We have Roberts on embezzlement
and grand theft dead to rights.  The next step is to nail him for
murder.  He looked pretty sick, though, didn't he?  All set up to talk
about insurance, and instead, he's confronted by a man he thought he had
killed and the son of a man he had just murdered."

"Nothing was said about attempted murder," Luke pointed out.

"There was a lot of discussion about that," Will put in.  Bridges
insisted we wait on any murder accusation until we had enough to be
absolutely sure it would stick."

"And Roberts couldn't have murdered Ash," Luke told him.  "I thought
about that.  Burt and Amie were waiting at the church when I got there.
There wasn't time."

"That's been one of the big problems, Luke," Will said.  "Roberts isn't
in this alone.  We want not only him but his partner, who's a lot
smarter than he is and harder to get a handle on.  But it was plain
Roberts was disappointed that I wasn't part of the stench that used to
be Amie's prize Arabians."

"There are too manyjagged edges," Luke said.  "Ash talked a lot about
starting things without knowing how they'd end.  His letter and
subsequent correspondence with Larson and Frane explained that.  And
it's clear enough why Jerry Hodges had to be shut up before he
testified.  I still don't see why Tom had to be killed."

"Your friend asks hard questions," Bo told Will, taking the steaming mug
of coffee with both hands.  "Nan's theory, which has held up almost too
well, was that Tom caught at least one very incriminating picture.  We
had no way of knowing what it was.  I was willing to put my money on
Tom's having caught Burt shooting the windshield of Madison Ford's
truck, sending it into Ash.  Roberts is a crack shot and owns the most
expensive 30-30 scope rifle around here.  But that's guesswork. Tom had
to be blackmailing Roberts.  The boy wasn't working, but he was spending
money like a pusher.  Come on, a half-grown kid with a seven-thousand
stake hidden away?"

"If Burt had been paying all summer, what made him take the chance of
killing the boy?"  Luke asked.

Bo attempted an explanation.  "Remember, Tom wasn't the first arson
case.  And none of the others, except for Jerry Hodges, also a murder,
made any sense.  Empty cars were blown up, flaming rags thrown on
porches, that kind of thing.  If you wanted to get rid of somebody in a
fire that would take his personal possessions with him-says camera and
film you would do well to establish the arson terror mentality in the
community just that way.  Then he would be one of a series, not a sore
thumb that would scream for motive."

"But Burt was in Maude's," Luke protested.  "In the john at Maude's," Bo
corrected him.  "I heard him send Amie to the kitchen. Then he said he
was going to the john.  He wasn't back when the garage went off."

"You think he was the running man Boniface saw?"  Luke asked.

"You saw Roberts go for Amie tonight.  He's fast.  And crafty. Whoever
borrowed your car to fire the Boniface house was crafty enough to know
that memory is a whimsical thing.  It might have come back to Boniface
any time who that running figure resembled.  And you were already set up
for it."

Luke saw Will's eyes on him.  He wasn't going to ask about Nan, because
he couldn't.  Will understood that.  "You stumbled into involvement in
Nan's murder.  We're convinced that rap was intended for Bo.  Roberts
had just figured out what was going on between Amie and Bo, and was out
of his mind with fury."

"He lied at that hearing," Bo put in.  "He sent me there specifically at
a certain time of day, knowing I'd find her body and report it right
away."  Bo shook his head.  "Old Silas Engel walked me right into
trouble.  Luke, the same testimony that saved you from jail after Nan's
murder set me up for the next shot.  When Silas pointed me out as one of
the men going to the Harrow cabin, Burt knew better than to think I was
going to see Nan.  He has always been afraid of Will because of Ash, and
probably because of Tom, too.  That was when our little spy ring began
to crumble and Burt set his fancy bomb trap for me.  He would have
gotten me, too, except for Will's insistence that I not ever be anywhere
Burt told me to be."

"You been carrying this around all this time?"  Luke asked Will.

"Hey."  Will grinned crookedly.  "I'm running out of people.  I got to
be careful.  What time is it?"

"I'm watching," Bo told him.

Luke studied Bo's expressionless face.  "How long do you figure Roberts
has been stealing Larson and Frane blind?"  he asked.

"Stealing?  About seven years, ' Bo said.  "Stealing blind, about four.
It speeded up about the time he married out of his class, about the time
Linden Porter left and formed this classy little company of hers.  You
wouldn't believe her net."

"Why would Burt hang back from murdering Linden, if she was so
expensive?"

"The company is convinced she is the brains behind the operation. And
she's no dummy.  We were halfway through the summer before we got any
line at all on Porter Properties.  Ash took it hard when Will told him
about that company of hers and what we suspected was going on.  That was
when Ash changed all his property to your name.  And look how she took
that!  But all this time she's smart enough to stay away from the
mountain.  Nobody knows where she lives.  She's got a P.O. box number
and a recorder.  Period.  That's living light on your feet."

Bo checked his watch and rose.  He looked down at Luke and half smiled.
"Are you up to some late-night excavating?  Will is pretty curious about
what Nan had you bury on Ash's place."

Luke stared at him.  "It's dead black out there and the stuff is buried
close to the bees.  I'd really rather give them another day to settle
down."

"Will is 'eally curious," Bo said.

Luke looked from one man to the other and rose.  "There are hints and
then there are heavy hints," he said.  "I guess a man has to earn his
bail around here."

"Something like that," Bo said.  'I'll see you when you get back."

The woods they passed through filled the car with the scent of mountain
misery.  That didn't have to mean anything.  It didn't take any more
than a prowling animal to release the perfume of that weed in the woods.

Bandit didn't move from his rug on the porch when Luke eased the car up
the drive at Ash's place.  "We should have left this buggy at your cabin
and walked over," Luke fretted.  "It's one thing to trespass. It's
something else to advertise it."

"Who's to see at this time of night?"  Will asked.  That was another
thing.  Why had Bo Sanders been so watchful of the time?  Dark was dark
and one hour as good as another.  Ash's cabin stood dark and silent in
air still musty from the rain.  Bandit whined and thumped his tail as
Luke approached the porch.  Luke petted the dog a minute and then tied
him to the post to prevent his following them out and getting stung.
Luke and Will circled the house toward the bee room.  There was
something ceremonial about putting on that bee equipment in the dark.
Luke adjusted his gloves while Will lit the smoker.  The hives hummed in
the near silence of the woods.  Luke paused, undecided.  The first hive
had still been there when he dug that hole.  He had to start all over,
pacing off the exact number of steps from where Ash's chair had been
lodged the morning before.  Will walked beside him, the smoker loose in
his hand.  Luke braced his foot on a shovel and began to dig.  Darkness
was a multiplier.  Loneliness, grief, and the scrape of a shovel all
doubled and tripled in the absence of light.  It had been awkward to dig
that first hole in bee equipment; it was just as onerous to dig it again
with the earth sodden with rain.  At last the shovel went past mud to
moist earth.  Then it snagged on the wrapping.  Luke knelt to brush the
earth away.  As he pulled the package out of its hiding place and stood
up, he heard Linden's voice, low and distinct.

"Hold it there, both of you, right where you are."  Luke felt that same
lurching in his belly that he had as a child when she used that tone on
him.  He gripped the package, feeling that ache of tension start along
his jawline.  "Toss it," she said, her voice firm and without emotion.
"Right over here where I can reach it."

Luke glanced at Will.  Will's eyes strayed to the automatic in her hand,
and he nodded to Luke.  A wilder instinct than self-preservation surged
through Luke.  He wanted to test her brittle impatience, to see how long
she could hold that muzzle firm.

"Toss it," she repeated.  It was one thing to flirt with his own death;
he had no right to play with Will's life, too.  He sighed and obeyed.

Linden didn't lean for the package but trained her gun steadily on Luke.
"I spent the day in Featherton, listening to rube gossip," she said.
"That case against you is airtight with no bubbles.  I wouldn't have
killed Ash if I hadn't been forced to.  But it's one thing to take the
heat for a little money that no one would have missed except for Burt's
carelessness.  It's another thing to stand for murder.  Ash asked for it
anyway.  He was the one who kept me from moving in with Burt when that
was all it would have taken for us to make a go of it, not only as
partners, but as people.  But no!  He could afford love for every slimy
waif that crawled up this mountain, but he couldn't keep his hands off
my life.  It's going to be a lot easier to kill you, Luke.  Maybe even a
pleasure."

At Will's shout, Luke dived for the earth as Linden fired.  As the
bullet streaked past Luke, a rifle shot sounded from Ash's dark doorway.
Linden's gun dangled and fell, firing again as it struck the earth.  She
began to wail, that high, shrieking wail Luke remembered from her
childhood fury at him.

Amie stepped from the shadow of the porch, her dead-white face framed by
that pale abundance of hair.  The rifle on her shoulder held a solid aim
on Linden.

"Greedy," Amie said breathlessly.  "You and Burt have been nothing but
money-mad all this time."

Linden had gripped her wounded arm and was screaming, the sound
vibrating and echoing through the clearing.  "Greedy, am I?"  she
shrieked.  "What do you know?  You always had money.  If I hadn't showed
your stupid Burt how to make a living in that job, he could never have
afforded you."

Amie glanced at Luke, who was struggling to his feet, encumbered by
beekeeper's gear.  "I'm sorry she almost shot you, Mr. Adams.  I really
am.  Sheriff Dodge was supposed to be here."

As she spoke, Luke saw the cruiser turn in from the road, traveling on
feel and parking lights alone.  Eddie Dodge was instantly out of the car
and running toward them.

Amie stood very still.  "My husband's whore was about to shoot Luke and
Will," she told Dodge.  "I fired first."  She said it like a child
reciting by rote.  She wavered as she spoke.  Will dropped the steaming
smoker and leaped forward to catch her arm.  "Inside," he urged her.
"Come inside."

Luke picked up the package Linden had been willing to kill him for. What
did Linden think Nan could have given him to hide that was worth the
chance she had taken tonight?  Dodge, having barked into his car radio
and handcuffed Linden into the back seat of the cruiser, walked over.

"You were lucky Amie was quick on the trigger, or Linden would have had
you."

"This was all a damned setup," Luke said, staring at him.  "Let's say
you gave us an opportunity and we took it," Dodge said.  "Burt's been
ransacking cabins ever since Tom died looking for the boy's pictures.
Why wouldn't they think that was what Ash hid for Nan?

Luke stared at the package in his hands.  "And you don't think so.'

"What I thought wasn't important.  I just needed to tell Linden that you
had buried something for Nan Harrow.  And then be sure you were covered
when she ambushed you."

Luke looked at him thoughtfully.  "Dammit, Eddie.  I have been asking
why those cabins were being searched for the last three weeks. Will just
said when we knew that, we'd know who the murderer was.

"He was right."  Dodge nodded.  "What does the name Patton mean to you?"

"The photographer in Featherton?"

"Same."  Dodge nodded.  Will had come out on Ash's porch to stand,
listening.  "Patton took a photo order from Ash the day before Ash was
killed.  Patton hadn't gotten around to processing that film when he
heard about Ash's death.  He got on the job during that hearing this
morning.  He was already waiting at the courthouse for the sheriff when
we booked you.

"Bird pictures," Luke told him.  "And shots of Nan for Will and me."

Dodge nodded.  "Real pretty stuff, but what sent Patton flying to the
sheriff was the rest of that roll of film with owls on it, night
pictures.  Ash had told him most of the pictures on that roll didn't
take.  Ash was wrong.  They took, all right, but Tom had been cagey
enough to take them to a stranger to develop.  Most of them were just
moonlight shots, but the second half of the roll were pictures of a man
working by the lights of a parked pickup truck, burying a dead body at
the base of a slash pile."

Luke couldn't blame Dodge for enjoying his few minutes of triumph.

"Roberts?"  Luke pressed him.  "You could actually tell it was Burt?"

"Clear enough for a driver's license," Dodge said.  "Who do you think
the dead man looks to be?"

"Ford," Luke whispered.  "It had to be Madison Ford, the night he
sideswiped Ash.  Will said Tom went out with the camera that night, and
he never went again."

"We've cordoned that slash pile over north, the bi one, remember? We'll
dig it out starting tomorrow morning."

"How can you know which one to look in?"  Luke asked.

"The owl in that picture is framed against Aspen leaves.  Those trees
aren't common at this level of the slope, but there's a stand right
there at the edge of that clearing."  He shrugged.  "No matter. We'll
dig slash piles until we find him.  In the meantime, the pictures will
do fine."

Lights were probing the drive.  Dodge turned.  "Tell Amie I'm real sorry
I was that few minutes late.  But thank her till I can do it for
myself."  He laughed softly.  "Don't tell her I got here late because I
slowed down to miss hitting a skunk down the road.  She might not
appreciate that."

When Luke entered the cabin, carrying the package, Will was in Ash's
kitchen making coffee.  Amie sat on the sofa across the room as if she
were drugged.  She was talking to herself out loud, almost incoherently,
the way Ash had babbled on that last morning.  And like Ash, her eyes
flowed unheeded tears.

"I was stupid.  I was stupid and distracted.  Why didn't I see what he
was doing?  I knew about that woman of his and the money he sent. But
the way he looked whenever she called, hating and cruel, made me feel
secure.  Then Bo came.  The tears overwhelmed her words, and she bent
with her head in her lap, weeping.

"Amie," Will told her.  'It's all over.  What has to be wound up will be
dealt with before you know it.  And Bo loves you.  He didn't mean to. No
man ever does.  But he loves you"

She lifted her head to look at him.  "I want to see Bo."

"You will," he said.  "He's over at Nan's now, walking the floor and
holding his breath that you'll let him explain."  As he spoke, he took
the package Luke had carried in from the clearing.

Amie looked at it and then at Will.  "After all that, you're not even
going to open that package?"

"I know what's in it," Will told her.  "It's a bunch of things Nan
treasured."  He shrugged, smiling a little.  "Birth certificates, grade
cards, chunks of baby hair from Tom and me.

"That Porter woman was willing to kill for that?"

"She was willing to kill for the pictures of Burt Roberts burying Ford.
When Sheriff Dodge told her Luke Adams was out on bond and had something
of Nan's buried up here, she jumped to the wrong conclusion. But those
pictures were worth the risk of waiting up here for him and Will.  She'd
already killed her father looking for that bunch of negatives."

"But they prove Burt's guilt, not hers."

"She and Burt have been masterful at covering each other for over a
decade.  You can just bet that Burt made her a deal.  If she could save
him from a murder rap, he wouldn't provide the evidence that would nail
her on the grand theft charges."

"And she still loves him," Amie added quietly.  Will shrugged. "Now
you're into real mysteries."

Eddie Dodge was in the door.  "You'll have to make a deposition of what
happened out there, Mrs. Roberts.  He looked at Luke and frowned. "I've
never played tricky games with an accused before, Adams, but this one
was out of my depth.  When Will told me about that buried stuff up here,
we had to use you for bait to get Linden."

"Thanks a lot, Eddie," Luke said.  "I happen to know she's a fair shot."

"A chance we had to take," Dodge said.  "But there were two of you and
one of her with Amie here covering you both.  Having the company get
Roberts and Linden Porter for theft wasn't enough.  Not after all those
lives."

"One thing still bothers me, Luke told him.  "Linden will never break
like that again.  Will her confession out there stand up in court?"

Dodge shrugged.  "Maybe so, maybe not.  But you know Burt Roberts. He
will squeal everything he knows before this is through.  Who else has he
got to squeal on?  And those pictures of Patton's have him dead to
right."  He paused.  "I sure don't mind seeing Linden get hers for
killing Ash.  That is one icy piece of woman."

Luke nodded.  "She's never been easy for me to understand."

Dodge grunted.  "I guess that means you think you are.  I still don't
really understand why you insisted on coming up here at the worst
possible time."

"I came because my father told me not to," Luke said.  "As he would have
told you, I never half learned to obey."

"You mean Ash?"  he asked.

"You get to be a father by fathering," Luke told him.  "I mean Ash."

The sun blazed in a clear, cloudless sky the day Ash Porter was buried
beside Nan Harrow.  Amie stood between Bo Sanders and Will while a scrub
jay rocked in the woods beyond, drowning out the minister's words.  Just
after noon on what would have been the next to the last day of Luke's
leave if he had not wired for' an extension, Burton Roberts was indicted
for the murder of Madison Ford and the attempted murder of Bodin
Sanders.  Linden Porter was charged with the wrongful death of Ash
Porter, her natural father.

"I'll be lucky if this is the last extension I have to ask for," Luke
told Will.

Will grinned at him.  "The way courts drag these things out, you could
be too old to fight by the time this business is settled."

"So I spend a little time on the mountain," Luke told him.  "I wouldn't
even mind seeing spring come here again.  What about you? You're at
least as trapped as I am.  You've got to testify in that grand theft
trial, too."

"Things could be worse.  Besides, Frane promised Bo Sanders the
manager's job up here when this mess is straightened out.  There's more
keeping me here than pushing me away.

Luke looked at him.  "Same.  I'd offer you a rentfree cabin for the two
years until my hitch is up.  Could you deal with that?"

"I could deal with that," Will told him.  "Somebody's got to feed Bandit
and take care of Ash's bees."

Luke shook the hand Will offered and forced himself to meet Nan's eyes
in that young, bearded face.  Ash had been half right.  There was pain
enough in attachment.  But flight wasn't the answer.