He raised his head an inch, petulance shining in his watering eyes and turning down the corners of his mouth. “Back off, Mary Lee. I got problems enough. I don’t need you chewing my tail. I don’t need it.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. She hauled her purse up off the floor and looped the strap over her shoulder, then started for the door, fed up to the back teeth with Rafferty men. With one hand on the knob she turned back and gave him a hard look. “What you need is to grow up.”

J.D. leaned ahead in the saddle a little as his horse surged to the top of the knoll at the blue rock. He reined the gelding in and sat for a moment with a hand braced against the pommel, listening, watching, waiting. Sarge turned his head from side to side in a lazy arc, ears flicking at the sounds of birds.

Del considered the blue rock the lower boundary of his territory. He maintained a diligent vigil over his space, patrolling the perimeter all hours of the day and night. He would have been ashamed of having J.D. know that. The thought weighed heavy in J.D.’s heart. Del didn’t want to be a burden on the family. He saw himself as an embarrassment, less than a whole man because of the fractured state of his mind. He lived up here year-round in part to hide himself-the ugly skeleton in the family closet. He worked the summer cow camp to redeem himself.

What else might he do for redemption?

Memories of bits of conversations swirled and bobbed in J.D.’s belly like backed-up sewage. Del’s crazy talk about his guns, the things he let slip about what he thought he saw up there at night, the way he had mistaken Mary Lee for Lucy. And he kicked himself mercilessly for the things he had said himself over the course of the last year. He had sounded off to Del about the outsiders pressing in on Rafferty land. He had vented his spleen about Lucy more than once. He had used his uncle as a sounding board, as if Del were too far gone to form his own opinions, never once thinking there might be a danger in it.

Christ, if Del had taken all that talk to heart, he might have seen killing Lucy as a noble cause. One act of violence could have pulled him off that narrow, crumbling ledge into the void.

J.D. didn’t want it to be true. Even considering the possibility seemed a betrayal. But he couldn’t keep the questions from forming or the possible answers from taking shape. Nor could he simply insulate the Stars and Bars from the outside world, as badly as he wanted to. There was no escaping society or its ambitions. They would have to fight and adapt to survive. He was responsible for the ranch and everyone on it, for their well-being and for their actions.

Responsible.

Will’s battered, angry face came to mind and threatened to pull him down another rough road, but the sharp crack of a rifle farther up the mountain shattered the image. Heart sinking lower, J.D. nudged his horse back into motion and continued on up the trail.

There was no sign of Del at the camp. No dogs ran out to greet him. The buckskin mare was gone out of the string in the corral. J.D. tied his horse to a rail and loosened his cinch, his gaze scanning the area the whole time for signs that Del had gone off the deep end. There were none. The place was immaculate as always. The snake curled in its cage nailed to the side of the cabin. That was hardly normal, but it was vintage Del, not out of what was ordinary for him. One of the first things his uncle had done when he moved up here was nail that cage to the cabin and stick a rattler in it.

Some unworthy part of his brain urged J.D. to go into the cabin and look around, but he flatly refused. Del’s cabin was sacrosanct; no one went in without his invitation. J.D. had always respected his uncle’s privacy. He wouldn’t step over that line now.

He sat himself down on a bench in the shade alongside the equipment shed to wait. If Will hadn’t gone, they would have been moving the herd that day. There wouldn’t have been time or energy to ponder questions of accountability and loyalty. But Will had gone. You gave him the boot, J.D. Your own brother. And now he sat waiting to question his uncle about the possibility of his involvement in two deaths. What kind of loyalty was that? Which of his obligations held the upper hand-to do what was legally right? morally right? right in his own mind? If he pledged allegiance to the family, then how could he turn his back on Will or his suspicions on Del? If the land came first, then was he really no better than Bryce?

He dropped his head in his hands and blew a breath out, wishing he could just snap his fingers and make it all disappear. A wish from his childhood, from the days when Tom had first taken up with Sondra, and the days when he had been blamed for Will’s mistakes or punished for some minor crime against the brother he had never wanted.

Damn foolish waste of time, wishing for things. Time, like most other factors, was not on his side. A man had to play the hand life dealt him. That was that. No whining, no slacking, no wishing for better cards.

From somewhere down the dark corridor of wooded trail that led to the north, a hound sent up an excited howl. Then Del’s black-and-tan coon dog came bounding into the yard, long ears fluttering behind him like banners. J.D. stayed where he was, looking idly down the trail. Seconds later Del burst from the thick growth east of the path. His buckskin horse exploded out of the woods like a demon erupting from another dimension, her ears pinned flat, nostrils flaring bright pink in her dark muzzle. They came into the yard at a gallop, Del standing in the stirrups, a rifle butt pressed back into his shoulder and J.D. in his sights.

“Jesus, Del!” J.D. shouted, vaulting up off the bench.

Recognition struck an awful spark behind Del’s eyes, beneath the metal plate that was heavy on his brain and charged with an evil current of electricity. He dropped the rifle out of position and reined the mare hard left. God damn, he’d nearly shot J.D.! He had nearly let the monsters inside him push him into pulling the trigger.

His legs were as rubbery as sapling trees as he stepped down off his horse. He gripped his rifle by the fore end of the stock to keep his hand from shaking.

“What the hell-” J.D. bit back the worst of what he wanted to say. Are you crazy? Have you lost your mind? He could see the shame in his uncle’s downcast eyes as he turned away to tie his horse to the corral railing.

His heart was running at a hard clip. The adrenaline that had burst through him ebbed now and his body shuddered as it receded. “You got the drop on me, pard. Guess I should have radioed ahead I was coming.”

Del didn’t comment. He flipped a rein around one of the rails. The mare had her head up and was still dancing a little from the excitement. The rest of the string abandoned J.D.’s sorrel and trotted over to their companion with their tails raised and eyes bright. Del focused on the Ruger 77, ejecting the brass-cased loads into his hand like peas from a pod.

“I heard a shot when I was down at the blue rock. That you?”

“Could be.”

“What’d you get?”

“Nothin’.”

J.D. narrowed his eyes. “Not like you to waste a shot, Del.”

Del turned away from him and slid the rifle into the scabbard on his saddle. “Too far out,” he mumbled. “Didn’t have a clear line.”

“What was it?”

Del swallowed hard and rubbed his scar with his fingertips. He couldn’t say he’d thought he’d seen a tiger. Tigers didn’t come out in the daylight. He shook his head and winced at the ache of his brain sloshing against the sides of his skull. No, dammit, J.D. didn’t know about the tigers. He couldn’t talk about the tigers-same way he couldn’t talk about the blondes dancing in the moonlight.

“Del?”

“Cat,” he said. “Don’t want cougars around with the cattle coming up.”