Shepherds Abiding in Dry Creek
Janet Tronstad

Published by Steeple Hill Books™

Dedicated to my grandfather, Harold Norris.

I remember him for his small kindnesses

and his big heart. He was a good man.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

Chapter One

“I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.”

John 10:11

Marla Gossett sat in her bare apartment on the one wooden chair she had left to her name. The apartment building faced a busy street in south central Los Angeles, with the constant hum of cars going by. Marla didn’t even hear the noise any longer. She’d sold her sofa yesterday and the kids’ beds the day before that. She wished she could at least take the beds with them, but they wouldn’t fit in the car when they moved. Besides, they all had sleeping bags.

Right now she was in the middle of selling her lamp to the African-American woman who had moved in down the hall a week ago.

Marla had given up on selling the chair she was sitting on. No one was willing to buy it with “XIX” carved into the arm. Not that she blamed them. She felt uneasy just sitting on the thing herself. She had put a notice in the hallway a week ago and several people had asked about the chair until they saw the numbers.

“You’ll have a new life away from here,” her African-American neighbor—Susan was her name—said softly. Susan was looking at these numbers on the chair. “Your son?”

Marla nodded. She wasn’t proud that her eleven-year-old son, Sammy, had carved the sign of the 19th Street gang into her furniture. She told herself it was only natural for young boys to be impressed with the tough guys that ruled their neighborhood. The 19th Street gang was the largest Hispanic gang in Los Angeles. She knew her son was just an onlooker at this point. Other people didn’t know that, though, and they were scared to buy the chair even if it was solid oak and had been the finest piece of furniture she owned.

The chair had been a wedding gift, and there was a matching wooden cross that came to hang behind it.

Susan looked up from the chair. “Well, I guess they have gangs everywhere. Where are you going, anyway?”

“A place called Dry Creek, Montana. My husband had an uncle who left us a house there before he died.”

“Did your husband get a chance to show it to you?”

Marla shook her head. She had already shared her vital statistics, so the woman knew her husband had died from lung cancer last year.

“Well, at least he left you with something,” Susan said in a tone that implied she didn’t expect much from men. “Of course, it would have been better if he’d gotten you some life insurance.”

“We always thought there was plenty of time.”

The woman nodded, and Marla wondered how it was that death had become so commonplace. Some days she wanted to scream at the injustice of it, but more often it just weighed her down with its ordinariness.

She had been a widow for over a year, and it still felt like yesterday. She’d married Jorge when she was nineteen, and it hadn’t taken long for the blaze of romance between them to settle into a steady flame of affection. At least, she had assumed the flame was steady. That was the way it had been on her side.

The cancer came hard and swiftly. It wasn’t until Jorge was gone that she had had time to think about her marriage. Near the end, when he could barely speak, Jorge confessed he’d been unfaithful several times and pleaded with her to forgive him. He said he didn’t want to die with those sins on his conscience.

After his diagnosis, Jorge had started praying often and had asked her to move their wooden cross into the bedroom. It seemed to comfort him, and Marla was glad for that. She believed her husband did repent his sins. So what could she do? There was no time to work through her feelings. She forgave him because she had to, and then he lost consciousness, dying later that same night.

When he was gone, all Marla could think about was their marriage. She kept wondering if something was lacking in her, and if that was why Jorge had not loved her enough to be faithful or to even talk to her about his problems. Maybe she didn’t inspire love the way other women did.

Even when he’d proposed, Jorge had not made any grand gestures of love toward her. Marla had not thought anything was wrong with that, though; she thought it was just the way he was. Marriage wasn’t all about roses and valentines. She’d accepted that. But had she missed some clue? Or were there many little clues she had ignored? Was a woman supposed to keep a tally of things that would tell her if her husband still loved her? How could she not even have known he was unfaithful?

As her feelings for Jorge changed, Marla wondered if she’d ever really known her husband. Still, especially in the past few weeks, she’d wished he were still alive so they could share the problems about Sammy. Jorge might have been unfaithful to her, but he had loved Sammy. What would Sammy do without his dad?

Worrying about Sammy had made her take the cross out of the box, where she’d put it after Jorge died, and hang it on the wall again. Sometimes she’d look at it, searching for the solace her husband had found in it. She wished she could find an answer for Sammy there. The cross didn’t speak to her the way it had to Jorge.

“Did you say Montana?” Susan was frowning for the first time.

Marla nodded. She wondered why the mention of Montana was disturbing her neighbor more than their earlier discussion about death had.

“They don’t have much color there.”

“You mean trees?”

Susan pursed her lips as she turned to study Marla. “No, I mean people.”

Marla had combed her hair this morning, as she did every morning. It was freshly washed and fell smoothly to her shoulders. At thirty-five, she knew she was no great beauty, but her skin was light olive, and she’d been told her eyes were nice. Her brown hair didn’t sparkle with highlights, but she looked all right. She wondered why Susan was looking at her with such an intense expression.

Her neighbor finally nodded. “You’ll do fine, though. I’d guess you’re—what—half Hispanic?”

“On my mother’s side.”

Susan kept nodding. “And your son and daughter. I’ve seen them. They could be white.”

Jorge had been half-and-half—Hispanic-Anglo—as well. That had been one of the things they had in common. “They pride themselves on being Hispanic, especially my son.”

Susan grunted. “That’s just gang talk. He’ll get over it quick enough when he’s away from here.”

“I’m not sure I want him to get over it,” Marla said stiffly. “He should be proud of his roots.”

So much had been taken from them. She had to draw the line somewhere.

“Take my advice and blend in,” Susan said as she picked up the lamp. “You’ve got a better chance of getting a new husband that way. Especially in a place like that.”

“But—” Marla protested. She wasn’t sure if she was protesting hiding her roots to find a husband or looking for a husband in the first place. She supposed she would have to marry if she wanted a new father for her children. But she wasn’t ready for that yet. What if a second marriage proved only how lacking she was as a woman? There was no reason to believe she’d do any better the second time around than she had the first.

“Trust me. No one wants to have a Hispanic gang member in their neighborhood, no matter where they live. If they don’t know you’re Hispanic, there’s no reason for them to make the 19th Street connection.”

“But Sammy’s not in the gang. Not really.”

Susan held up her hands. “I’m just saying these people will be nervous. There was an article in Time magazine last month—or was it Newsweek? Anyway, it was about gangs sending scouts out to small towns to see about setting up safe houses there. They want to have a place to send their guys so they can hide out from the police if things get bad. I wouldn’t blame a small town for being careful.”

“Well, of course they should be careful, but…”

Susan looked at the carving on the armchair again and then just shrugged. “I had a cousin drive through Montana a few years ago. If I remember right, he said the population is only about two percent Hispanic for the whole state. How big is this Dry Creek place you’re moving to?”

“Two hundred people.”

Susan nodded as she pulled the agreed-upon five-dollar bill from her pocket. “Then you and your kids will probably be the token two percent.”

Marla frowned as she stood up. She was ready for the woman to leave. “We’re probably not that far from a large city. Maybe Billings. There’ll be all kinds of people there.”

Susan snorted as she finished handing the bill to Marla. “All I can say is that you’ll want to take your chili peppers with you. I doubt you’ll find more than salt and pepper around there. It’s beef and potato country in more ways than one.”

Marla slipped the bill into her pocket. “We don’t have a choice about going.”

She didn’t want to tell her neighbor that the police had come to her door a little over a week ago and warned her that Sammy was on the verge of becoming a real member of that 19th Street gang. She figured they were exaggerating, but she couldn’t take a chance. She had given notice at her cashier job and started to make plans. She had to get Sammy out of here, even if it made every soul in Dry Creek nervous. At least she would own the house where they would live, so no one could force them to leave. Sammy and her four-year-old daughter, Becky, would be safe. That was all Marla cared about for now.

The neighbor took one more look at the scarred chair. “I guess we all do what we need to do in life. It’s too bad. It was a nice chair.”

Marla nodded.

“I wish you well,” Susan said as she started walking to the door. “And, who knows, it might not be so bad. My cousin said they have rodeos in the summer and snow for Christmas. He liked the state.”

Marla mumbled goodbye as the neighbor left her apartment. She’d been anxious about the move before talking to Susan. Now she could barely face the thought of going to Dry Creek. But looking down at the arm of that wooden chair, she knew she had to go. She’d lost her husband; she refused to lose her son, too.

She wouldn’t hide their ethnic roots from the people in Montana, but she saw no reason to advertise them, either. And, of course, she’d keep quiet about Sammy’s brush with gang life, especially because it would all be in the past once she got him out of Los Angeles. She was sure of that. She had to be. Dry Creek was her last hope.

Chapter Two

A few weeks later

Les Wilkerson knew something was wrong when his phone rang at six o’clock in the morning. He’d just come in from doing the chores in the barn and was starting to pull his boots off so he wouldn’t get the kitchen floor dirty while he cooked his breakfast. It was the timing of the call that had him worried. He’d given the people of Dry Creek permission to call him on sheriff business after six and it sounded as if someone had been waiting until that exact moment to make a call.

Les finished pulling off his boots and walked in his stocking feet to the phone. By that time, enough unanswered rings had gone by to discourage the most persistent telemarketers.

“I think we’ve had a theft,” Linda, the young woman who owned the Dry Creek café, said almost before Les got the phone to his ear. She was out of breath. “Or maybe it’s one of those ecology protests. You know, the green people.”

“Someone’s protesting in Dry Creek?”

Dry Creek had more than its share of independent-minded people. Still, Les had never known any of them to do something like climb an endangered tree and refuse to come down, especially not in the dead of winter when there was fresh snow on the ground.

“I don’t know. It’s either that or a theft. You know the Nativity set the church women’s group just got?”

“Of course.”

Everyone knew the Nativity set. The women had collected soup-can labels for months and traded them like green stamps to get a life-size plastic Nativity set that lit up at night. Les was sure he’d eaten more tomato soup recently than he had in his entire life.

“Well, the shepherd’s not there. We don’t know what happened to him, but we can’t see him. Charley says that Elmer has been upset about all of the electricity the church is using to light everything up. He says someone either took the shepherd or Elmer unplugged it to protest the whole thing.”

Les had known there would be problems with people eating all that soup. It made old ranchers like Elmer and Charley irritable. It was probably bad for their blood pressure, too.

“Unplugging something is not much of a protest. It could even be a mistake.” Now, that was a whole lot more likely than some high-minded protest, Les thought, and then he remembered promising the regular sheriff that he would be patient with everyone. “But I’ll talk to Elmer, anyway, and explain how important the Nativity set is and what a sacrifice everyone made so we could have it.”

Les was sure Elmer would agree about the sacrifice part. He’d said he was eating so much soup he might as well have false teeth.

There were some muffled voices in the background that Les couldn’t make out over the phone.

“That’s Elmer now. He just came in and he claims he didn’t unplug anything. He says if we can’t see the shepherd, it’s because it’s not there and Charley’s right that somebody stole it.”

“The light could be burned out.” Patience went only so far, Les thought. He wasn’t going to go chasing phantom criminals just because someone thought something was stolen. There hadn’t been an attempted theft in Dry Creek since that woman had broken into the café two years ago. And she had not even taken anything. After all that time, it wasn’t likely someone would suddenly decide to steal a plastic shepherd.

“Maybe it is a defective light,” Linda agreed. “But I’m going to tell Charley and Elmer not to go over and check. It’s still pitch-black outside. Charley’s been looking out the café window for a good fifteen minutes, and it’s still too dark to see if the shepherd is there. And if it’s not there, then it could be a crime scene and we’d need the professionals.” Linda’s voice dipped so low that only Les could hear it. “Besides, the two of them could fall and break half their bones going over there in the dark. You know how that patch of street in front of the church is always so slippery when we’ve had snow. So I’ll tell them you’re going to handle it. Okay?”

“Sounds good,” Les said. He’d rather safeguard old bones than chase after imaginary thieves any day. “I’ll be right there.”

Les usually made a morning trip into town, anyway, before he drove a load of hay out to the cattle he was wintering in the far pasture. The little town of Dry Creek wasn’t much—a hardware store, a church, a café and a dozen or so houses—but the regular sheriff guarded the place as if it was Fort Knox, and Les, who was the town’s only volunteer reserve deputy, had promised he’d do the same in the sheriff’s absence.

Just thinking of the sheriff made Les shake his head. Who would figure that a man as shy as Sheriff Carl Wall would ever have a wedding, let alone a belated honeymoon to celebrate with a trip to Maui?

It was all Les could do not to be jealous. After all, he was as good-looking as Carl, or at least no worse looking. Les even owned his own ranch, as sweet a piece of earth as God ever created, and it was all paid for. Not every man could say that. He should be content. But for the past week every time he thought of Carl and that honeymoon trip of his, Les started to frown.

If Sheriff Carl Wall could get married, Les figured he should be married, too. He was almost forty years old and, although he enjoyed being single, a man could spend only so much time in his own company before, well, he got a little tired of it. Besides, it would be nice to have a woman’s touch around the place. Les knew he could hire someone to do most of the cooking and cleaning. But it wouldn’t be the same. A woman just naturally made a home around her, like a mother bird making her nest. A man’s house wasn’t a home without some nesting going on.

Of course, Les told himself as he pulled his pickup to a stop beside the café, the sheriff had gone a little overboard with it all. He had completely lost his dignity, the way he had moped around until Barbara Strong agreed to marry him. Les would never do that. He had already seen too many tortured love scenes in his life; he had no desire to play the lead in one himself.

His parents were the reason for his reluctance to marry. They had had many very public partings and equally dramatic reconciliations. Les never knew whether they were breaking up or getting back together. The two of them should have sold tickets to their lives. They certainly could have used some help with finances, given the salary his father earned in that shoe store in Miles City. Half their arguments were about money. The other half were about who didn’t love whom enough.

His parents were both dead now, but Les had never understood how they could be the way they were. They were so very public about how they felt about everything, from love to taxes. As a child Les had vowed to stay away from that kind of circus. It was embarrassing. Growing up, he never even made a fuss over his dog, because he didn’t want anyone to think he was becoming like his parents.

No, Les thought as he stepped up on the café porch, if he was going to get married there would be no emotional public scenes. It would all be a nice sensible arrangement with a nice quiet woman. There was no reason for two people to make fools of themselves just because they wanted to get married, anyway.

“Oh, good. You’re here.” Linda’s voice greeted Les as he opened the door.

The café floor was covered with alternating black and white squares of linoleum. Formica-topped tables sat in the middle of the large room, and a counter ran along one of its sides. The air smelled of freshly made coffee and fried bacon.

Elmer and Charley were sitting at the table closest to the door and they both looked up from their plates as Les stepped inside. They had flushed faces and excitement in their eyes.

“They already went over to the church,” Linda whispered as she closed the door behind Les. “They snuck out when I was in the kitchen making their pancakes.”

Les could tell the two men were primed to tell him something. It hadn’t stopped them from eating their pancakes and bacon, though. All that was left on their plates was syrup. Les walked closer to them. Fortunately, no one had ever suggested people should have soup for breakfast, so that meal had always been safe.

“It’s a crime,” Elmer announced from where he sat. He had his elbows on the table and his cap sitting on the straight-backed chair next to him.

“We thought maybe you were right about the light just burning out,” Charley explained as he pushed his chair back a little from the table. “We didn’t want to bother anyone if that was all that happened, so we went over to take a look.”

“Looks like a kidnapping to me,” Elmer declared confidently, then paused to glance up at Les. “Is it a kidnapping if the kidnapee in question is plastic?”

“No,” Les said. He didn’t need to call upon his reserve deputy sheriff training to answer that question. “It’s not even a theft if someone just moved the figure. That’s probably what happened. Maybe the pastor decided the Nativity had too many figures on the left side and put the shepherd inside the church until he could set it up on the other side.”

Les reminded himself to get these two men a new checkerboard for Christmas. A dog had chewed up their old cardboard one a month ago, and now, instead of sitting in the hardware store playing checkers, they just sat, either in the hardware store or in the café, and talked. Too much talking was giving them some pretty wild ideas. He couldn’t think of one good reason anyone would steal a plastic shepherd, not even one that lit up like a big neon sign at night.

Charley shook his head. “Naw, that can’t be it. All of the wise men are on the other side. The pastor wouldn’t think there are too many figures on the left. Not even with the angel on the left—and she’s a good-sized angel.”

“Besides, we know it’s not the pastor moving things around, because we found this,” Elmer said as he thrust a piece of paper toward Les. “Wait until you see this.”

Les’s heart sank when he saw the sheet of paper. He had a feeling he knew what kind of note it was. It had a ragged edge where it had been torn from what was probably a school tablet. There must be a dozen school tablets in Dry Creek. The note was written in pencil, and he didn’t even want to think about how many pencils there were around. Anyone could have written a note like this.

Les bent to read it.

Dear Church People,

I took your dumb shepherd.

If you want to see him again, leave a Suzy bake set on the back steps of your church. It needs to be the deluxe kind—the one with the cupcakes on the box.

P.S. Don’t call the cops.

P.P.S. The angel wire is loose. She’s going to fall if somebody doesn’t do something.

XIX

Well, there was one good thing, Les told himself as he looked up from the paper. There weren’t that many people in Dry Creek who would want a Suzy bake set. That narrowed down the field of suspects considerably. He assumed the XIX at the bottom was some reference to a biblical text on charity. Or maybe a promise to heap burning coals on someone who didn’t do what they were told.

“So it looks like the shepherd is really gone,” Les said, more to give himself time to think than because there seemed to be any question about that fact, at least.

Elmer nodded. “The angel is just standing there with her wings unfurled looking a little lost now that she’s proclaiming all that good news to a couple of sheep. You don’t see anything standing where that shepherd should be.”

The door to the café opened briskly and an older woman stepped inside. She had a wool jacket wrapped around her shoulders and boots on her feet. Les thought she still had to be cold, though, in that gingham dress she was wearing. Cotton didn’t do much to protect a person from a Montana winter chill.

“Mrs. Hargrove, you shouldn’t be walking around these streets. They’re slippery,” Les said to the woman. The older people in Dry Creek just didn’t seem to realize how hazardous it was outside after it snowed. And they’d lived here their whole lives, so if anyone should know, they should.

“Charley told me some little girl was in trouble.” Mrs. Hargrove glared at Les as she unwound the scarf from around her neck and set down the bag she was carrying. “Something about kidnapping and theft. I hope you’re not planning to arrest a little girl.”

Les stepped over to help Mrs. Hargrove out of her jacket. “Someone stole the shepherd from the Nativity set. I don’t even know who did it yet. But if it is a little girl, she’ll have to be dealt with just like anyone else.”

Les turned to hang Mrs. Hargrove’s jacket on the coatrack by the door.

“Well, a little girl wouldn’t have done that,” Mrs. Hargrove said as she smoothed down the long sleeves on her dress. “Mark my words.”

“Little girls can get into just as much mischief as boys.”

One thing Les had learned in his reserve deputy sheriff training was that a lawman shouldn’t make assumptions based on stereotypes about people. There were all kinds of stories about mob men who loved their cats and sweet-looking grandmothers who robbed banks in their spare time.

“Still, I say no little girl took that shepherd,” Mrs. Hargrove said as she walked over to a chair next to Charley and sat down. “If she couldn’t get the angel unhooked, she’d take the baby Jesus. What would she want with a smelly old shepherd?”

Les frowned. “Just because a man works with animals and lives alone, it doesn’t mean he smells bad.”

Les had a few sheep on his ranch, but the only full-time shepherd he knew was Mr. Morales, who lived in the foothills of the Big Sheep Mountains north of Dry Creek. Les figured bachelor ranchers needed to stick together. Once in a while he invited Mr. Morales down for breakfast. Les decided he needed to do that again soon. Smelly, indeed!

“Well, no, of course not,” Mrs. Hargrove agreed and had the grace to blush slightly. “But still, I can’t see that a little girl would—”

“Whoever took the shepherd wants to trade him for a Suzy bake set—the deluxe edition.” Les walked over and gave the note to Mrs. Hargrove. “That sounds like a little girl to me. You recognize the writing?”

Mrs. Hargrove taught Sunday school and she knew all the kids in and around Dry Creek. When she finished reading the note, she looked up and shook her head. “I don’t recognize it, but whoever wrote the note probably tried to disguise their writing, anyway.”

Everyone was quiet for a minute.

“Are any of the classes in Sunday school memorizing the nineteenth verse of some book?”

Mrs. Hargrove shook her head. “Not that I know of. They wouldn’t write it that way, anyway, would they? XIX? That’s roman numerals.”

“I wonder about the Curtis twins,” Elmer said as he reached for his cup of coffee. “I don’t think they’d mess around with numbers, but they like cupcakes.”

“They like to eat cupcakes. Those boys don’t want to bake cupcakes,” Linda said. “Besides, they’re too busy with their new sleds to think up a scheme like this.”

Les shrugged. “I don’t know. Those boys live close to the church. I can’t see any of the ranch kids coming into Dry Creek on a night like last night. For one thing, we would have seen tire tracks over by the church.”

Les lifted his eyebrow in a question to Elmer and the man shook his head.

“Since there were no tracks, it means it had to be someone who was already in town last night.” Les let his words sink in for everyone. Somebody in the center of Dry Creek had taken that shepherd. If there were no tracks, they couldn’t blame it on a stranger passing through.

“Pastor Matthew won’t like it if his sons stole the shepherd,” Charley finally said, and then glanced over at Mrs. Hargrove. He must have seen the frown on her face. “Of course, I don’t believe it was the Curtis twins. Not for a minute. They don’t even know about Roman numerals. They can barely add up regular numbers.”

“Nobody added the numbers,” Les muttered before Charley could get himself in a spin. “They just put them out there.”

“Well, the only other kids in town are those two new kids.” Elmer stared down at his cup. “And what would they want with a shepherd? They’ve never even been to church.”

There was another moment’s silence.

“They’ve never been anywhere,” Charley finally said. “We’ve heard there are two new kids, but has anyone ever seen either of them?”

Everyone just looked at each other.

“Just because no one’s seen them doesn’t mean they’re thieves,” Mrs. Hargrove protested. “We need to have open minds here.”

“Still, you have to admit it’s peculiar,” Elmer said after a moment’s thought. “We’ve all seen the mother, but she must keep those kids inside. The only reason we know about the kids is because there are three names on their mailbox and we know the woman is a widow, so it has to be a woman and her two kids.”

The mailbox had sprung up next to the driveway of the old house when the woman and her children moved into town. Les figured they had not realized that everyone in Dry Creek collected their mail at the counter in the hardware store, so no one had any need for an individual mailbox by their house. The mailman made just one stop for the whole town, even though he’d started going out to some of the ranches this past year.

Les frowned. Now that he thought about it, he would have expected the woman to have taken her mailbox down by now. Surely she must know how useless it was. And another thing was coming to his mind. The woman hadn’t seemed all that familiar with the hardware store the day he’d seen her there, either. Which all added up to only one possibility. “Somebody must be taking the woman’s mail to her.”

Les looked around. He’d bet it was one of the people sitting right in front of him.

“Well, I don’t see what’s wrong with that,” Elmer finally said defiantly. “I figure it’s only neighborly. Besides, it’s no trouble to drop their letters in that box. They don’t get many of them, anyway. The boy got a letter from Los Angeles, but it wasn’t heavy. No two-stamper. And they don’t get catalogs to speak of, either. Just the J. C. Penney Christmas catalog.”

“The mail is protected by federal law. You shouldn’t be touching anyone’s mail without their permission.” Les wondered if the sheriff’s department should put out a book of rules for people. He wondered if anyone in Dry Creek would read it if they did issue one.

Elmer jutted his chin out. “All I’m saying is that there are the two kids, and if we haven’t seen them, maybe it’s because neither of them needs to go farther than their driveway for the mail. That’s all.”

“They could even be sick,” Linda added softly. “It’s flu season. They’d stay inside for sure if they were sick. Maybe they have colds.”

“And I can’t see sick kids stealing a shepherd,” Mrs. Hargrove said. “Especially not in this weather. Their mother probably wouldn’t let them go outside if they were sick, and they wouldn’t be able to see the Nativity set from the windows in their house, so they wouldn’t even know the shepherd was there. They can’t steal what they don’t even know about, now, can they?”

Les wondered how long the people of Dry Creek would protect a real criminal if one showed up. He hoped he never had to find out. “Forget the shepherd. Nobody said anybody wanted that shepherd. It’s the bake set that seems to be the goal. If I remember right, one of those names on the mailbox is Becky. Sounds like a little girl to me. Especially since we know the mother’s name is Marla Something-or-the-other.”

“It’s Marla Gossett. Remember, I told you about her? Said it would be a good idea for you to get acquainted with that new woman,” Elmer said as he looked up at Les. “Didn’t I say that just the other day?”

Les grunted. “You didn’t say anything. What you did was break the law by calling in a false fire alarm. That was a crazy stunt. And just to get me over to the hardware store while Mrs. Gossett was there.”

“Well, it would have worked if you’d stayed around to talk. She’s a nice lady. Charley and I both knew you wouldn’t come over if we just said there was an eligible woman we wanted you to meet. When have you ever agreed to do something like that?”

“I have a ranch to run. I can’t be running around meeting people all the time.”

“Wouldn’t hurt you to stop work for a night or two and actually go out on a date,” Elmer muttered. “It’s not like you’re busy with harvest season.”

Les had never known the two old men could be so manipulative. They definitely needed a new checkerboard. And a steak or two to get their blood going.

Les looked directly at Charley and Elmer. “The two of you didn’t take that shepherd, did you? Just to give me a reason to talk some more with this Mrs. Gossett?”

The stunned expressions on the faces of the two men were almost comical.

“What would give you that idea?” Elmer demanded.

Les just grunted. He wondered if XIX was part of the telephone number for a dating service.

Charley grinned a little. “Well, this isn’t like that. We don’t have anything to do with the shepherd being gone.”

Les felt a headache coming on. “Maybe it is the new people, then. I’ll have to go and talk to them.”

“Oh, no, you don’t. You can’t go over there and accuse the Gossetts of taking something,” Mrs. Hargrove protested with an indrawn breath. “They’re new here. We’re supposed to make newcomers feel welcome.”

“They’re not welcome if they’re going to break the law.”

“But it’s only a plastic shepherd,” Linda said as she looked up from the chair she was sitting in. “You said yourself, it’s not like it’s a kidnapping.”

“It’s only a small crime,” Charley added with a glance at Mrs. Hargrove. “The women’s group didn’t even pay real money for it. Just all those soup labels. Hardly counts as a crime, now that I think on it.”

That was easily the third time Charley had looked to Mrs. Hargrove for approval in the past ten minutes, and Les knew what that meant. Not only was the sheriff married and off to Maui, but it looked as if Charley was sweet on Mrs. Hargrove. What else would make a man stop speaking his mind until he made sure a particular woman held the same opinion? No, Charley had either turned in his independence or he owed Mrs. Hargrove more money than he could repay.

Les sighed. He didn’t know which would be worse. A debt beyond a man’s means or one-sided love. Both of them turned a man’s spine to mush. It had certainly done that to Charley. One look from Mrs. Hargrove and Charley would probably vote to send that plastic shepherd to the moon on taxpayer money. And Charley was a Republican who didn’t believe in spending a dime on anything. Nothing should change a man like that. It just wasn’t right. Besides, Mrs. Hargrove looked as if she didn’t even know Charley was twisting himself in knots trying to win her approval.

Elmer was the only one who looked as if he was holding on to his common sense.

That was another thing Sheriff Carl Wall had warned Les about. The people of Dry Creek couldn’t always be relied upon to see things in an objective manner. For one thing, many of them couldn’t bear to see anyone punished. That’s why it was so important that the law stood firm. It was for everyone’s protection.

“Today it’s a plastic shepherd. Tomorrow who knows what it will be,” Les said. “We have to stop crime where it starts.”

Elmer nodded. “That’s right. The law needs to have teeth to it. If the women’s group hadn’t collected all those soup labels, that Nativity set would have cost five hundred dollars. Who around here has five hundred dollars to throw away?”

There was a moment’s silence. Five hundred dollars went a long way in a place like Dry Creek.

“Well, at least take some doughnuts with you if you’re going to go over to that house this early in the morning,” Linda said as she stepped over to the counter and took the lid off the glass-domed tray that held the doughnuts.

“And be sure and invite the children to Sunday school,” Mrs. Hargrove added. She seemed resigned to the fact that someone needed to ask the hard questions. “I’ve been meaning to go over there with an invitation myself. It just always seems to be snowing every time I think of it, and you know how slippery the streets are when that happens.”

“This is a criminal investigation. I’m not going to invite anyone to Sunday school.”

Mrs. Hargrove looked at him. “It’s the best place for someone to be if they’ve been stealing. I noticed you weren’t in church yourself last Sunday.”

“One of my horses threw a shoe and I needed to fix it. You know I’m always there if I can be.” Les had come to faith when he was a boy and he lived his commitment. Quietly, of course, but he figured God knew how he felt about public displays of emotion. And even if he didn’t dance around and shout hallelujah from the rooftops, he was steady in his faith.

“We miss you in the choir.”

“I haven’t sung in the choir since I was sixteen.”

Mrs. Hargrove nodded. “You still have that voice, though. It’s deeper now, but it’s just as good. It’s a sin to waste a voice like that.”

Les had quit the choir when people started to pay too much attention to his singing.

“The Bible doesn’t say a man needs to be in the choir.” Or perform in any other public way, Les added to himself. “It’s okay to be a quiet man.”

“I know. And you’re a good man, Lester Wilkerson. Quiet or not.”

He winced. “Make that Les. Lester sounds like my father.”

The church had been a home for Les from the day he decided to accept a neighbor’s invitation to attend. It was the one place his parents never went, and Les felt he could be himself there.

“I don’t know why you never liked the name Lester,” Mrs. Hargrove continued. “It’s a good old-fashioned name. It’s not biblical, of course, but it’s been the name of many good men over the years.”

“I like Les better. Les Wilkerson.”

How did he tell someone like Mrs. Hargrove that he had loved his parents, but he had never respected them? He had never wanted to be his father’s son, so he saw no reason to take his first name as well as his last.

Les was a better name for a rancher than Lester, anyway, he thought. He’d changed his name shortly after he’d signed the deed for his place. He had been twenty years old, and that deed had marked his independence from his parents. The name Les helped him begin a new life.

Linda handed him a white bag filled with doughnuts. “I put in some extra jelly ones. Kids always like the jelly ones.”

“I wonder if that XIX on the note is the edition number on that bake set,” Charley said.

“Maybe it’s a clue,” Elmer offered. “Is there something that is ten, one and then ten?”

“An X sometimes stands for a kiss,” Linda said. “You know when people sign their letters XOXO—kisses and hugs.”

“I doubt anyone was thinking of kisses.” Les figured he didn’t have all morning to guess what the numbers meant. Not when he had people to question.

“You might ask the woman to come have dinner with you some night here,” Mrs. Hargrove said as Les started to walk to the door. “Just to be sociable. Sort of show her around town.”

“Nobody needs a map to get around this town. There’s only the one street.”

Ever since Charley and Mrs. Hargrove had managed to match up their two children, they had been itching to try their new matchmaking skills on someone else. Well, it wasn’t going to be him.

Les would find his own wife when he wanted one and he would do it when no one was watching. He might even have gotten around to asking the new woman out eventually if people had left him alone. She seemed quiet and he liked that. Her brown hair was a very ordinary color. No streaks of auburn. No beauty-parlor waves. It was just always plain and neatly combed when he saw her. She didn’t even wear those dangling earrings that always made him feel a woman was prone to changing her opinions from one minute to the next. All in all, he believed, she would be predictable and that was good. Les didn’t want an unpredictable wife.

Yes, Marla Gossett might very well have suited him.

Now, of course, he couldn’t ask her out. It would be pointless; she’d never accept. Not when he was going to be knocking at her door in a couple of minutes to ask if her daughter was a thief. Only a fool would ask for a date after that, and one thing Les prided himself on was never being a fool.

It was a pity, though. These days Les didn’t meet that many quiet women who looked as if they’d make sensible wives. He’d noticed when he saw her in the hardware store that she was a sensible dresser, right down to the shoes she wore. Because of his father, he paid particular attention to a woman’s shoes. They told a man a great deal. Still, everything about Mrs. Gossett had seemed practical that day, from her washable cardigan to her well-worn knit pants.

Most men liked a lot of flash in their women. But Les figured the quieter the better. He never really trusted a woman with flash.

Les wondered, just for a moment, if it would be worthwhile to let Mrs. Gossett know he was single, just in case she ever started to wonder about him the way he was wondering about her.

Then he shook his head. He didn’t want to chase after an impossible dream. He didn’t even know Mrs. Gossett and she didn’t know him. What he did know were the reasons he wasn’t likely to get to know her. He had to just let the thought go.

Chapter Three

Marla moved the hanging blanket slightly so she could look out the window of her new living room. The sun would be coming up any minute, but the small town of Dry Creek was still dark and quiet. Snow had fallen during the night and there was just enough light in the small circle from the one street lamp to see that there were no fresh tire tracks on the road going through town.

That didn’t mean she could relax and remove the blankets, though. Down the street there was a glow in the window of the café and she could see several figures through the big window. People had obviously come into town from the other direction and any one of them could decide at any minute to drive down the road toward her. If they did, they would soon be able to see inside her front window if she moved the blanket, and she didn’t want anyone to look into her place until she was ready.

The words of her neighbor back in Los Angeles were never far from her mind.

Marla had cleaned her windows with vinegar yesterday and she could still smell the cleaning solution as it mingled with the scent of the mothballs from the blanket. The panes in the windows rattled because the putty was all worn away, but at least they were finally clean.

Today Marla planned to wash the walls. The paint was peeling away and she’d feel better if she knew the walls were brushed down and ready to go when she could afford to buy paint.

In a strange way, she was grateful for the necessity of scrubbing this old house. If it had been less filthy when she arrived here with her children, she might still be brooding over the change she’d made. She’d been nervous the whole trip up here, but now the peeling paint and thick dust called her to action and she had no time to fret.

She had not given any thought to the house until she arrived. If she had not been desperate, she would have turned around and driven away after she first looked inside the door. The house was set back from the street a little and there was a nice white picket fence around it. That part was how her husband had described the house to her. Marla had been okay with the idea of that white picket fence, but nothing Jorge had said had prepared her for the inside of the house.

Of course, her husband’s memories of the house had been from thirty years ago. Jorge wouldn’t have recognized the house today, either. Even in their cheap apartment in Los Angeles, the paint had managed to stay on the walls.

Marla didn’t want anyone from this small town to look past the fence and into her windows until she was ready. There wasn’t much inside her house and, what was there was shabby. On the long drive up, she’d promised herself she would make a proper life for her children in Dry Creek, and she didn’t want her relationship with the town to start off with the people here pitying them.

Somewhere around Utah, she’d realized that the ethnic difference was only part of what she needed to worry about. After all, her parents had raised her to be more Anglo than Hispanic, anyway. They’d even given her an Anglo name. She and the children might be able to fit in that way eventually. The fact that they were also poor was another problem. She knew that from the welfare days of her childhood. A lack of money would be harder to hide than anything.

Marla planned to get the house in shape before she did more than say a quiet hello to anyone. She didn’t want her children to feel shame for either their heritage or their lack of possessions. First impressions were important.

That’s one reason she had hung the plain khaki-colored blankets over the windows and left the Mexican striped blankets as coverings for the sleeping bags.

Maybe if Sammy had had neighbors who expected good things from him back in Los Angeles, he wouldn’t have been drawn to the 19th Street gang. Of course, the neighbors were only part of it. She knew she hadn’t given him what he needed, either. She had been so preoccupied with taking care of Jorge that she hadn’t paid enough attention to Sammy.

It was Sammy who most needed a new start.

Marla took a deep breath of the cool winter air. Despite the fact that the air was tinged with the scent of vinegar and mothballs, it still smelled clean and fresh when she compared it to what she’d breathed down south.

Dry Creek promised a new life for all of them and Marla intended it to go well. Even though she’d had car problems on the way up and hadn’t had much money left after she’d paid for the repairs, she was determined she and her children were not going to be charity cases. Charity was never free; one always paid the price by enduring the giver’s pity. She didn’t want that.

She wanted her children to feel proud of who they were.

Besides, they didn’t need charity. Any day Marla expected to get a check in the mail refunding the deposit on their apartment. Her rental agreement gave the landlord twenty days to refund the money and he’d probably take all that time. Once she had that check, she would have enough money to buy paint for the walls and a good used sofa. And that was after she put aside enough money to support her family for a few months while she looked for a job. She knew she needed to spend some time with her children before she started a new job, though. Too much had happened too fast in the past year for all of them. They needed time to be together.

At first Marla had worried that she would not have enough money to support her and the children for those few months. It seemed as if the cost of heating the house would take what little money she had, but then she had discovered that the fireplace in the living room worked and that there was a seven-foot-high woodpile half-hidden in the trees behind the house.

At last, something was going her way.

It looked as if, during the years when the house had stood empty, the trees had grown up around the towering stack of log chunks back there. She hadn’t paid any attention to the stack until the children told her about it one day and she had gone out to look it over. The pile had good-sized logs meant for long winter fires. If need be, on the coldest nights, she and the children could camp in front of the fireplace to sleep.

At least heat was one thing that wouldn’t require money for now.

Which was a good thing, because the refund check was going to total only around a thousand dollars. There wouldn’t be much money left for extras. Christmas this year would be lean. She’d explained the situation to Sammy and Becky and they seemed to understand. Wall paint and a used sofa might not look like exciting Christmas presents, but it would make their house more of a home. She was letting each child pick out the color of the paint for their bedroom and she was hoping that would be enough of a Christmas present.

Besides, they could make some simple gifts for each other this year. That could be fun for all of them. And she’d make the sweet pork tamales that were the children’s favorite. It was her mother’s special recipe and that, along with the traditional lighted luminaries, always meant Christmas to Marla.

Marla had brought dozens of corn husks, dried peppers and bags of the cornmeal-like masa with her when she moved to Montana. She remembered the words of the neighbor who had bought her lamp and she didn’t want to take any chances. Christmas without tamales was unthinkable, and not just because of the children.

By the time Christmas was here, she hoped to be able to take the blankets off the front windows of her house and welcome any visitors inside. By then, she might even be comfortable offering visitors a tamale and explaining that she and the children had a Hispanic heritage.

Marla saw movement and stopped daydreaming about the future. The door of the café had opened and a man had stepped out. She had recognized the pickup parked next to the café when she first looked out the window, and so she figured the man standing on the café porch was Reserve Deputy Sheriff Les Wilkerson. He was probably getting ready to patrol through Dry Creek and had stopped at the café for coffee. Marla had seen the deputy walk down the street of Dry Creek every morning since she’d moved here and it made her nervous.

She hadn’t heard of any criminal activity around, but she kept the children close to the house just in case. She’d called the school when they’d first arrived in Dry Creek and they had agreed, since it had been almost time for the holiday break, that Sammy could start his classes after Christmas. Becky was even more flexible. When she’d first noticed the sheriff patrolling the town, Marla had been glad she’d arranged to have Sammy close by for a few weeks, but maybe if the children were in school she’d at least know more about what was going on.

There must be something happening if a lawman was doing foot patrol. In Los Angeles that happened only in high crime areas. She hadn’t heard any gunshots at night, so she doubted robberies were the problem. The deputy must be worried about drugs.

Marla had briefly met the man last Friday when she was at the hardware store looking for paint, and she had wanted to ask him about any local drug problems. But he had stayed only long enough to scowl at everyone and do something with an ashtray.

The two older men sitting beside the woodstove talked about Les after he left. They made it sound as if he was somebody special. She supposed the older men wanted to reassure her that her children were safe here in Dry Creek with a lawman around, but, truth be told, the reserve deputy didn’t make her feel better about the isolation of the small town.

She was used to lawmen, even reserve volunteer lawmen, who had a certain amount of swagger to them. Les didn’t strut around at all. He looked strong enough, but he wasn’t exactly brawling material. Not only that, he didn’t even carry a gun.

She doubted there were any lawmen in Los Angeles who didn’t carry a gun. There were certainly none the few times she’d visited her aunts and uncles in Mexico. Marla supposed Les would have to talk a criminal down, but when she’d been introduced to him, he hadn’t seemed to be much of a talker. He’d only nodded and mumbled hello to her that day. He was even quieter than she was, and she was perfectly able to carry on a conversation. She’d do fine with talking when she had her house ready for visiting.

Of course, no one else seemed to be worried about Les’s lack of conversational skills, and they knew the town and him much better than she did. Maybe he was one of those people who shone in emergency situations, but who didn’t appear to be of much use at other times.

Les wasn’t even wearing a uniform that day. He’d had cowboy boots on his feet and a plaid flannel shirt on his back. The only thing that had marked him as a reserve deputy sheriff was a vest and, from what the other men said, he didn’t even always wear that. Of course, everyone must just know he was the lawman on duty; it was such a small town.

Marla watched Les step off the café porch and start walking down the street. He must be making his usual morning patrol. Fortunately, the sun was starting to lighten up the day, so he might even be able to see while he did it.

Les felt the snow crunch beneath his boots as he moved down the one street in Dry Creek. Usually he thought it was an advantage to have only one street in town. Today, though, he would have liked a million other directions to turn.

He stopped when he got to the church. The Nativity set was still all lit up even though the sun was beginning to rise. The wise men stood to one side with their hands overflowing with gold baubles. The blond angel was hanging from a wire attached to the rain gutters of the church. Les took a minute to look closely at the rain gutters and note that whoever had written the note was right. Someone did need to add another wire or the angel would eventually fall.

Les looked back at the wise men and wondered why one of them hadn’t been taken instead of the lone shepherd. They certainly looked more exciting than the missing figure. Everyone he knew, except himself, would pick flash over something drab any day. Strangely, it didn’t make him feel any easier in his mind about the theft.

When he could delay no longer, Les walked farther down the street and then started up the path to the Gossett house. Until Marla and her children moved to town, the house had been closed up. Old man Gossett had spent some time in prison before he died and no one had taken care of the house. Someone had enough civic pride to paint part of the picket fence that faced the street so the property looked somewhat cared for if an outsider happened to look at it on a casual drive through town. None of the people in Dry Creek liked to see the town buildings look neglected and Les couldn’t blame them.

As he walked up the path, Les saw how the weather had started to flake the white paint off the house until there were large sections of exposed gray boards. Even the snowdrifts couldn’t disguise the fact that the yard had gone to seed. Only the pine trees in the back of the house had flourished, growing together in thick clumps of muted green.

Les was halfway up the walk when someone turned off the light inside the house. For the first time, Les thought maybe the little girl really had stolen the shepherd. What else but guilt would make someone turn off the lights when a visitor was coming to the door? Usually people turned a light on when someone was walking toward their house.

When Les stepped on the porch, the door opened a crack. It was just enough for Les to see a small portion of a woman’s face. There was one brown eye and a hand holding the side of the door. The hand covered up most of what face would have shown in the crack. The room behind the face was in darkness. Les wouldn’t have recognized the woman even though he had met her that day in the hardware store.

“Mrs. Gossett?”

The woman nodded.

Les wished she would open the door wider. Regardless of what he’d told himself, he was looking forward to seeing more of the woman’s face. He hadn’t taken a very good look at her the other day in the hardware store and he’d like to see her better. There was no particular reason to ask her to open the door wider, though. Especially because it was cold out and she was probably just keeping her heat inside like any wise Montana housewife would do.

“I brought something to eat,” Les said as he held up the white bag. “For the kids. And you, of course.”

He had a feeling he could express himself a lot better if the woman didn’t keep eyeing him as if she was going to slam the door in his face any minute now.

At his words, her face stiffened even more. “We have enough to eat. You don’t need to worry about us.”

Les had coaxed frightened kittens out of their hiding places many times and he reminded himself that patience usually won out over fear.

“It’s only a few doughnuts,” Les forced his voice to be softer. “Linda, at the café, thought the kids might like them.”

The woman’s face relaxed some. “Well, I guess doughnuts are different.”

The woman opened the door and Les gave her the bag. He waited a minute in hopes she was going to ask him inside. It would be easier to talk to her if she was relaxed and not looking at him through the crack in the door. But once she took the bag, she closed the door so it was back in its original position.

“Please tell the woman—Linda—thank you for us. We haven’t had a chance to get over to the café yet, but it’s a very nice gesture.”

Les was afraid the woman was going to think he had just come by to bring her the doughnuts, so he said his piece. “I’m doing a search of houses. We’ve had some property stolen from the church.”

The woman frowned. “We don’t go to church.”

The woman turned a little as if she heard something inside the house.

“You don’t need to go to church to take something.”

The woman snapped back to look at him. “Are you accusing me of stealing? From a church?”

“No, ma’am.” Les ran his finger around his shirt collar. “It’s just that I did think that maybe your daughter—well, do you know where your daughter was last night?”

The woman turned again to look inside the house.

Les figured it was one of the children who had been distracting the woman, so he wasn’t surprised when he heard her whisper to someone. “Just be patient. Mommy will be right there.”

The woman turned back to look at Les. In all of the turning, the door had opened a little farther. “Becky was here with me last night.”

The woman was wearing an old beige robe that was zipped up to her neck and she didn’t have any makeup on her face. She had strong bones, Les noticed. And a weariness to her that made him think she’d come through a long patch of hard times. He couldn’t let his sudden sympathy for her change what he needed to do, though.

“Was your daughter with you for the entire night?” Les could see into the rest of the large room behind the woman. The windows were all covered so the room was in shadows, but he could make out most of it. Not that there was much to see. Except for a wooden sitting chair, there was nothing there. Maybe the family’s furniture was still coming on a moving truck.

“Of course, all night. Where else would she be?” The woman was looking straight at him now. “I don’t even know why you’re asking me these questions. You came straight to my door. I saw you. You’re not asking everybody. Just because we don’t have blond hair and blue eyes like everyone else around here, it doesn’t mean we stole something.”

“No, of course not.” Les was bewildered. Did everyone around here have blond hair? He hadn’t noticed. Still, he’d come to do a job and he might as well get it done. “I’m talking to people because someone stole one of the Nativity figures from the set in front of the church.”

“That has nothing to do with us.”

Les nodded. “I just wondered, because whoever took the figure wanted to trade it back to the church for a Suzy bake set.”

A little girl’s squeal came from behind the door. Les couldn’t see the girl, but he could hear her as she said, “A Suzy bake set! The one with the cupcakes?”

“No, dear, I don’t think so,” the woman said with her face turned to the inside of the room.

Why was it that the line of a woman’s neck, when she turned to look over her shoulder, always reminded him of a ballet dancer? Les asked himself. Marla—well, Mrs. Gossett—had a beautiful neck.

The woman turned back to look at Les. She even gave him a small smile, which made the knot in his stomach relax. No one who was guilty would smile. But then, maybe the mother didn’t know what the daughter had done.

The woman continued, “I’m sorry. I think every little girl everywhere wants that Suzy bake set in the cupcake edition. It’s quite the thing. I don’t know if you can even find it in the stores anymore.”

Les nodded. Maybe that’s why someone had written the demand note. Maybe they thought the church would have extra pull with a store. “Whoever took the shepherd left a note.” He held the paper out to her. “I think a girl might have written it.”

The woman didn’t even look up to read the note. She just shook her head. “If that’s where you’re headed, you should know my daughter is only four. She can’t even write her name.”

“Oh.” Les had not known the girl was so young. He didn’t think a girl that age could even lift the shepherd figure. The thing was plastic, but it was heavy enough. And it was bulky.

“She’s going to learn to write her name,” the woman continued, as if she was making a point. “We believe in schooling. She’ll go to preschool a couple of days a week in Miles City after the holidays. Most kids here probably already know how to write their names, but Becky didn’t get a chance to go to preschool in Los Angeles. If she’s behind, she’ll catch up.”

“I’m sure she’ll learn to write in no time,” Les said just to put the woman at ease, since her daughter’s schooling seemed important to her. “Kids learn fast.”

Les hoped he was speaking the truth. What did he know about kids? He knew he should forget about the kids and say goodbye, but he found he didn’t want to rush off. Not now that, with the sun fully up and spreading its sunshine all over, Les noticed that some of the shadows were gone from the woman’s face.

He wondered if she would go out to dinner with him after all. Now that they were talking about education instead of crime, she seemed a little friendlier.

“I—ah—” Les swallowed. “We have a good school in Miles City. You don’t need to worry about that.”

The woman smiled. “I’m glad to know that.”

Les wasn’t prepared for the woman’s full smile.

He swallowed again. “Thanks for talking to me. Let me know if you see anything suspicious. It’s probably just some kids playing a prank. Wanting to see if I can figure out that XIX clue they left. I wonder if it’s part of a math equation.”

Les had been ready to turn and walk away when the smile fell from Mrs. Gossett’s face and something in her eyes shifted. She’d suddenly gone tense.

“Is there something you want to tell me?” he asked.

She shook her head. The weariness was back on her face. “The XIX. Where was that?”

“At the end of the note.”

The woman bit her lip nervously. “Are you going to be in town for a little while?”

Les didn’t flatter himself that she wanted to see him again, but he nodded. “I’ll be at the café for another half hour or so. If you think of something that might help, let me know.”

She nodded.

There wasn’t anything more to say, so Les gave her a goodbye nod. “It was a pleasure to talk with you, ma’am. And welcome to Dry Creek.”

Les turned and left. He hoped Mrs. Hargrove would be happy with his little welcome speech at the end. He’d even meant it.

Marla barely waited for the man to step off her porch before she closed the door and locked it. Of course, turning the lock was just habit. She had nothing to fear from the reserve deputy sheriff. Although, if her suspicions were right, she might not want to hear what he had to say to her and her children if she had to take her son over to the café in a few minutes.

“Sammy,” she called.

Becky was happily walking around with her bunny slippers and frog pajamas on. But it was almost seven o’clock and Marla hadn’t heard from her son yet this morning. Usually he was up by now even though it wasn’t a school day. She’d thought earlier that he was sleeping in. Now she knew he was just hiding out.

“Sammy, come out here.”

Marla leaned back against the locked door and looked around. For the first time she wondered how she could have fooled herself so completely. She could paint the rooms in her house with gold leaf and the people here wouldn’t respect them. Not if Sammy had stolen the Nativity shepherd from the church and tagged that note with the 19th Street gang symbol. Her family would be marked as troublemakers regardless of how their house looked or what their ethnic background was. People were scared of gangs, and rightfully so. If they figured out Sammy had wanted to be in a gang, there would be no new start for them. The whole move up here would have been pointless.

“Sammy!”

Her son stepped into the living room. He was wearing a long white T-shirt and baggy pants. It was typical gang clothes for south central L.A.

“I thought you were going to throw those clothes away,” Marla said. They didn’t have many clothes, but Sammy did have some jeans that fit better. And why did he need to spike his hair?

“I’ve got to wear something.” Sammy glared at her. “I can’t go around naked.”

Marla felt that sometimes she didn’t recognize her son. “You have those jeans I got for you to wear when you start school here—”

“They don’t fit.” Sammy shrugged. “I’m saving them for when we paint the house.”

Marla forced herself to relax. She supposed that clothes were the least of her worries, although people did form opinions about young people because of the way they were dressed. “I just want to be proud of you.”

Sammy grunted. “What’s in the bag?”

Marla looked down. Becky was sitting on the floor and had already opened the white bag Les had left with them. She hadn’t taken anything out, although she had a grin on her face.

There were so few smiling moments for Becky these days that Marla didn’t want to spoil this one by questioning Sammy right now. The sheriff would be in town for another half hour. They had time to eat a bite.

“The woman at the café sent us over doughnuts for breakfast.” Marla said. “Wasn’t that nice of her?”

Becky nodded and beamed up at her. “Yes, Mommy.”

Sammy grunted.

Marla didn’t react to Sammy. Gratitude wasn’t the big problem of the day, either. “Let’s go sit at the table when we eat them. We don’t want to get everything sticky.”

Sammy had already walked over and looked in the sack Becky held. For the first time this morning he reminded Marla of the little boy he had been. “Hey, there’s jelly doughnuts. Cool. I can see the raspberry filling coming out of one of them.”

“Let’s take them to the table,” Marla repeated for Becky’s ears.

“I am, Mommy,” Becky said as she stood up and then reached down and grabbed the bag.

Marla watched her children walk into the kitchen together. Becky was holding the bag of doughnuts, but Marla could see that Sammy was guarding them as he walked with his sister. What was she to do? Marla asked herself as she leaned back against the door. Sammy’s heart was good. Look how careful he was to help Becky without taking the sack from her. An aggressive child would just grab the bag. But not Sammy. He had always had a warm place in his heart for his little sister.

She was surprised it hadn’t all clicked together for her earlier when she was standing there talking to the deputy sheriff. Becky might not have written that note asking for a Suzy bake set, but Sammy had. He knew what Becky wanted for Christmas. Becky had been talking about that bake set for weeks. Marla had even wondered if she might be able to squeeze the money out of her budget for one. She hadn’t been sure if she could do it, so she hadn’t said anything to either of the children. She’d just let her suggestion of handmade gifts stand.

Maybe that had been a mistake. Marla realized that if she had told Sammy she was buying a few presents after all, maybe he wouldn’t have taken that shepherd. Somewhere in all of this, she was partially at fault.

She couldn’t help but think that Jorge would have known what to do for Sammy. Maybe Sammy felt free to misbehave because he knew she wasn’t as sure of herself as Jorge had been in disciplining him. She wasn’t used to flying solo as a parent and she wasn’t sure she could do a good job of it. Sometimes a growing boy needed a father.

Marla listened to the voices of her children in the dining room for a minute, then started forward to join them. She was going to have to do her best to give Sammy what a father would.

Marla was glad the card table and folding chairs had fit in the luggage carrier on top of the car when she moved up here. Her children were sitting at the table now. It might not be as sturdy as the table she would eventually buy for them, but it was important for them to have a place to sit down and eat together. For all of Sammy’s sullen ways, he’d never protested eating dinner with the family.

Sammy had put white paper plates and plastic cups on the table. He’d even brought out the gallon of milk. Marla was pleased that they had waited for her.

Marla let everyone finish their doughnuts before she cleared her throat.

“Becky, will you go to your room and get dressed, please?”

Becky didn’t always end up with a matching outfit, but she liked to dress herself and Marla encouraged her to be independent.

After Becky left, Marla turned to Sammy. “Is there something you need to tell me?”

“Nah,” Sammy muttered, his face flushing.

Marla counted to three. “Did you take a shepherd from the church’s Nativity scene?”

Sammy’s face got redder. “It’s just a stupid shepherd. They don’t even exist anymore. At least, not anywhere except in Mexico. I mean, who needs them? We’re through with that life. We’re turning white.”

Marla kept her voice even. “Just because we moved up here, it doesn’t mean that we’re not still part Hispanic.”

Sammy grunted. “I haven’t seen any amigos around.”

No one would know Sammy was Hispanic by looking at him. She knew he identified himself with his old amigos, but maybe it was time for them all to step away from their background a little bit.

“You’ll meet some new friends when you go to school.”

“Yeah, right.”

“We’re not ashamed of being Hispanic.” Marla tried again. “We’re just getting to know people slow and easy. We don’t need to be any particular ethnic group for a while.”

Sammy grunted.

Marla decided she couldn’t talk about their heritage all morning.

“You know it’s wrong to take things that don’t belong to you. We’ll go over to the café and talk to the deputy who was here asking about the shepherd. Then you’ll give the shepherd back and we’ll talk about what your punishment will be.”

Marla was hoping that if Sammy confessed to what he had done and returned the shepherd, no charges would be filed. She didn’t know how much the Nativity figure was worth, but she doubted it had a high enough value to make this anything but a misdemeanor. Once they figured that out, she’d talk more with Sammy about his other feelings.

“I could give up Christmas,” Sammy offered. “Not that it’s going to be anything, anyway.”

“I’m hoping to make sweet pork tamales,” Marla said.

Sammy looked up. “With the green chilies?”

Marla nodded. “If I can find a nice pork roast to use in the filling.”

“Well, maybe I could give up Christmas after the tamales are all gone.”

Marla smiled. “We’ll talk.”

Marla wondered how she could make Sammy feel more at home in Dry Creek. She knew he missed his friends. Even though those friends were not good for him, he was still entitled to miss them. A few days ago he’d gotten a letter from a boy back in Los Angeles. Sammy had protested, but eventually he’d agreed to let her read the note about some baseball, his lucky baseball, that he’d left behind and how the boy was going to get it to him soon.

At least Sammy had one friend there who didn’t sound like a gang member. She hoped baseball wasn’t gang code for something else. She couldn’t forbid Sammy to have contact with everybody, though. A boy needed some friends, and the note sounded fine. Maybe she had been wrong to postpone school for him by the few weeks that she had. Of course, it was too late to change that now. The classes would be on Christmas break next week, anyway.

“Let’s see if Becky is ready,” Marla said. “We want to go over while the sheriff is at the café.”

“He’s not a regular lawman, is he?” Sammy asked with a frown. “He doesn’t look like the police or anything.”

“I suspect he’s close enough to the real thing.”

“I’m not afraid of him,” Sammy announced.

Marla figured her son was lying about not being afraid when he took Becky’s hand to hold while they walked down the street to the café. He shrugged off the hand Marla tried to rest on his shoulder, but she was glad he had Becky’s hand at least.

They had to pass the church to reach the café and Marla looked over at the Nativity set. Since the church was on the same side of the road as her house, she couldn’t see the lighted figures from her windows. It was nice just knowing they were there, though. She’d heard someone say that the whole town of Dry Creek planned to sing carols around the Nativity set on Christmas Eve.

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