The Eagle and the Fox (A Snowy Range Mystery, #1)

Josiah Foxglove is given a second chance when he takes over his family's spread in the shadow of the Snowy Range. A veteran of the Gulf War, he came back broken in body and spirit.

Marcus Colton buried his long-time lover and best friend three years ago. Lonely and still grieving, Marcus finds solace in keeping his business afloat but that doesn't help him get through the long, dark nights.

Three damaged souls converge as violence wracks the small community of Centurion, WY. The town protects its own so when Kit Golden Eagle shows up, it’s easy to place blame on the stranger. It looks open and shut, but for Josiah and Marcus the facts simply don’t add up.

Something’s rotten in Centurion, something that smacks of a hate crime...

THE EAGLE AND THE FOX
(A Snowy Range Mystery)

First electronic edition published by PubRight

ISBN (eBook): 978-0-9906048-7-7

Published in the United States of America with international distribution.

Cover Design by Dreams2Media

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATION
To all who serve and protect.
Thank you.
I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Chapter One
Twice Shy

––––––––

“M
arcus.” The man ducked his head, almost bird-like quick, tucking his chin in tight. It didn’t help. The scars still showed whitish and raw. He was growing a beard. It only made it worse.

Marcus extended the kindness. He kept his eyes on the cash register and muttered, “Josiah,” in response. It was the little dance they did once or twice a month when the burly near-stranger came into the feed store to stock up on ranch necessities.

Josiah looked around. “Slow for Saturday.”

Marcus near bit his tongue. Josiah kept to a few words... mostly howdy, how much, see ya next time. It would have been awkward, but after a bit you got to accepting what the man gave you because he had reasons, a shit ton of them, what with the scarring from the IED and the metal rods holding him upright.

It seemed odd to know the intimacies of a man’s inner workings when the man himself was an enigma, a stranger to the town he was born in, the town where his parents had their farewell service in the cleared out space in Polly’s restaurant amid the savory smells of steak on the grill arguing with stale beer and staler pretzels ground into the wide plank flooring.

Shifting from the cash register to the cluster of sacks just at the edge of the counter, Marcus said, “Hard times,” and proceeded to bag up the pitiful few items. Ten penny nails. Duct tape. Some industrial grade staples. A roll of twelve-gauge electric wire.

The wire was heavy. Josiah reached across the counter and grabbed at the edges of the sack, holding it open. The touch was incidental. Marcus hadn’t meant anything by it. It was just a casual scrape across the man’s knuckles. They both flinched. Marcus would have laughed and said oops or ’scuse me, except he’d clamped his jaw, mimicking the taller man, holding back. A tremor rattled his gut like it always seemed to when Josiah Foxglove was near.
What’s with that, anyways?

Marcus asked, “Doing fence this weekend?” He wanted to kick himself. Of course the man was doing fence. That’s what you did when you made do on ninety acres of not nearly enough to support you and yours.

Josiah had shrugged. He was also standing there, at the end of the counter, holding onto the sack. Planted. Like his worn boots had somehow glued themselves to the dusty, cracked linoleum. Grown roots.

It was unseemly. And unprecedented. Marcus decided to go for broke. “You know, Josh, it’d be a hella lot cheaper to go with the single strand barbwire.”

He swallowed, remembering in a gush of oh shit that Fox Ranch ran a small herd of cutting stock and hacks for tourists to take for an hour’s spin around Sheep Mountain. The glint in Josiah’s eyes wavered between
are you shitting me
and
yore a dumbass cracker
. While his ears heated to boiling, he tried for a quick recovery. “You know, to keep Paulie’s herd out?” Or not.

Shut up, Colton, just shut the hell up already.
“...you know, with things being tight as they...”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Bring up another sore spot, idjit.

Josiah blinked, almost in slow motion, his eyes following Marcus’ lips as the gibberish spewed out, unfiltered and uncontrolled. The front door opened and closed, the overhead bell tinkled, feet shuffled, the sound approached and receded.

Marcus choked back a
thank God
and meant it. Customer, serial killer, bank robber... didn’t much matter. The distraction was well-timed. He said, “Well, if there’s anything else you need,” and turned away, barely aware his hand still shared possession of the sack. At the last minute, he relinquished control and muttered, “I have to pee,” as he bolted for the safety of his office.

The state of his bladder was only partially true. His belly had cramped up enough that bile flooded the back of his throat, coating his innards with red hot acid. It hurt like hell. He fished a handful of antacids out of his shirt pocket and cursed softly as he tried to peel the covers off the nesting boxes. His hands were too big, too rough, and too arthritic from a lifetime working as hired help to handle the delicacies of the task at hand.

Frustrated, Marcus sank into the creaky swivel chair, letting his ass find the sweet spot that damn near two generations of ranchers and shop keepers had worn into the ancient wood. Of all the things that said family, it was a rickety chair that most grounded him across time and space. But time hadn’t been kind. Now it was just him left. There wasn’t family, hadn’t been for longer than he wanted to think on.

“Oh, Tommy. Why aren’t you here?”

Marcus glared at the blank wall of rough cut lumber. He followed the lines of the distressed surface like he always did late at night, his hand wrapped around a tumbler of whiskey, his heart wrapped around the gravestone in the small plot of land where all the Coltons and the Hendersons were laid to rest.

Following habit, he reached into the bottom drawer and withdrew the bottle of liquor, swiveling it in the natural light. It seemed different, the colors reflecting through the cheap glass, paled out and anemic. Not nearly so rich or so tempting as when, in the hunger of pre-dawn, he poured the amber fluid into the tumbler, swished it around and tossed it back to suffer the burn running full throttle into his screaming gut.

Instinct warned against, but what-the-hell won out. He poured two fingers, measuring the amount precisely with an expert splash. Three years. Three fucking long years. It’d taken him most of that to perfect his technique, night after night of pouring his soul and his loneliness down his maw of despair. Week after week of mourning. Months, then years of grieving bleeding into that single moment when today a stray touch reminded Marcus of what he’d lost.

He almost hated Josiah, really, truly hated him. Hated the broke man the damn military had returned, leaving him to struggle in the assback of nowhere Wyoming. Washing their hands of men who’d not just served, but sacrificed in ways that weren’t obvious. It wasn’t just the steel locking a man’s bones into some semblance of working order, nor was it the flesh wound of pride and self-respect that ripped open skin and muscle and made talking harder than hard. Marcus totally got that it made taking the first step, then the next, seem like too much effort.

But getting it was one thing, doing something about it? Well, there was the trick. He was hardly the poster child for saint of the year, caregiver to the wounded holding on to an existence that, on a good day, didn’t care squat if or how a man got by. Fate played a man false, especially a man like Josiah, prideful hard and duty bound. A man who’d give his shirt off his back. A man who’d donated pieces of his body. A man most had forgot.

Lifting the tumbler, Marcus hissed, “Here’s to you, Josiah Foxglove. You earned it.”

Marcus pushed away from the desk and struggled to his feet, feeling all of his forty-seven years. He still had to pee, so he ducked into the adjoining employee bathroom. After splashing water on his face and doing the sniff test—breath into cupped palm to nose—he deemed himself safe to face any customers who might wander in as closing time fast approached.

As he re-entered the store, Marcus watched his part time helper trot down the main aisle, intent on carrying out some task.

“Mr. Colton?” The voice was barely a pipsqueak, a chirrup of sweetness that brought a smile every time the sixteen-year-old girl spoke up.

“Yes, Pet? What can I do you for?”

The girl smirked and tittered. “Um, well... Mr. Barnes wanted to know when we’d be getting in the tag thingees.”

“Agritags?”

“Um, yeah? I think that’s them.” She bobbed her head. It made the blonde braids bounce and jiggle. Not for the first time, Marcus wanted to release the rubber bands holding the fine hair in a rigid twist. It made her look twelve, and it made him feel like an ogre or a dodgy uncle with less than gentlemanly intentions.

Of course, nothing was further from the truth.

The kid’s mom had come round one snowy afternoon. Janice had married a no good shithead from the rez up north who planted his seed a few times, then took off when jobs dried up and times got hard. The boys were half-bloods, dark, brooding bundles of useless just like their dad. Petilune was different. Blonde, blue-eyed, petite and painfully shy, she stuck out like a sore thumb. Tongues had wagged something fierce when the kid was younger, but the busybodies had finally shrugged off the incongruity. Janice hadn’t been a pillar of virtue growing up. She was lucky the town had a forgiving nature when it suited, so when it came time to do right by an innocent kid, Marcus had thanked God for short memories.

What they couldn’t shrug off was the gnawing poverty keeping the family down. Marcus had let himself be talked into having the girl help out around the store. There’d been more on offer than that...

“She can do you for whatever needs doing, Mr. Colton. Sweeping. Stuff like that.” The woman had sidled up close, too close, leaving Marcus in a sweat. “Pet’s shit with numbers, but she’s clever and willing.” She’d pursed her lips, her eyes gone crafty and assessing, looking him over. “Very willing, if you get my drift.”

Other books

Montana Dawn by Caroline Fyffe

Gift from the Gallowgate by Davidson, Doris;

Wentworth Hall by Abby Grahame

Trace of Fever by Lori Foster

ATONEMENT by S. W. Frank

The Coastal Kingdoms of Olvion: Book Two of The Chronicles of Olvion by Larry Robbins

Heart of Stone by Cathryn Cade

Broken Promises by Reid, Terri

The Winter of the Robots by Kurtis Scaletta

The Sense of an Elephant by Marco Missiroli