Page 22 of Combust
He wasn’t looking forward to seeing half the year devoted to the holiday he hated. Not one bit.
“Trees can be put in cold storage for weeks before they’re displayed for sale,” Dane informed him, grimly.
He dismounted, handed his reins to Cade, and began to walk slowly around the new clearing, using his phone to photograph anything that caught his attention.
His expression grew darker and darker as he completed the circuit around the former grove.
Finally, Dane returned, and got back on his patiently waiting horse.
“Scent’s already gone. C’mon, let’s head back,” he said, his tone clipped. “I need to report this to Mary Jacobsen—she’s the police chief—and warn my neighbors to keep an eye out.”
“Christmas tree rustlers,” Cade muttered to himself as he guided his horse around to follow Dane back down the mountainside. “Now I reallyhaveheard everything.”
* * *
Sunday, Nov. 2
The following afternoon, Cade finished putting up the electric fencing around five acres of pasture, constructing a temporary hotwire paddock that was part of Dane’s rotational grazing scheme.
Then he headed back to his cabin to change out of his work clothes and shower before his meeting with Elle Swanson. He’d decided not to shave. It made sense to let his beard grow during the winter months, to help keep his face warm when he was working outdoors in the wind and snow.
Wearing his best shirt and his spare jeans, which now smelled of horse, he walked over to the big yellow Victorian house. It was time to pay his respects to the Swanson clan matriarch and receive her formal permission to live on the ranch.
I feel like I’ve time-traveled back to the 1880s, Cade thought as he entered the house and stepped into the foyer. The smells of lemon-scented furniture polish and roasting meat greeted him, along with an abundance of dark wood wainscoting and old-fashioned pale green wallpaper dotted with pink rosebuds.
He glanced around curiously, taking in the semicircular antique stained-glass panel set above the front door, and the wide staircase curving up to the second story.
The back wall of the foyer was covered with framed photographs ranging from nineteenth-century daguerreotypes in silvery grays and blacks to more recent color photos.
With a pang, Cade recalled a similar wall of photos in his parents’ den. All gone now, destroyed on that catastrophic Christmas Eve twenty years ago.
During their ride yesterday morning, Dane had told him that one of his ancestors on his late father’s side of the family was among the first Europeans to settle in this area. He’d married an Agaidika Shoshone woman, and their son had founded the Grizzly Creek Ranch. Elle’s people, the Einarsson clan, had come to Idaho out during the gold rush of the 1860s and ended up farming and ranching in nearby Challis.
“Cade, is that you?” Dane’s voice called from somewhere further inside the house.
“Yup,” answered Cade, trying to shake off the feeling that he was intruding in this clan sanctum.
“We’re in the office. Down the hallway, first set of doors on your right.”
“On my way.” Cade set foot in the long, carpeted hallway that ran from the foyer to the back of the house, dividing it nearly. More wainscoting and rosebud wallpaper lined the hallway.
As he walked, he noticed that the wallpaper’s pattern matched the carpet runner placed over the hardwood floor.
He stopped in front of a closed set of pocket doors, and knocked.
“Come in,” said a low female voice.
Feeling like he was about to encounter a nest of rattlesnakes, Cade cautiously slid open the doors.
The room beyond was lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crowded with binders and ledgers. A big antique oak desk supporting a flat-screen computer monitor dominated the space.
Sitting behind the desk was Elle Swanson. She was an attractive woman who appeared to be somewhere in her sixties, with a clear complexion, kind eyes, and light brown hair heavily frosted with silver.
As Cade slid the pocket door closed behind him, she rose gracefully to greet him, revealing that she was tall, with a lush figure. She was dressed casually in a coffee-colored Grizzly Creek Ranch sweatshirt and jeans.
“Mom, I’d like you to meet Cade Hunter,” Dane said. He stood next to the desk, wearing a serious expression.
She looked Cade over in much the same way that Dane had at their first meeting yesterday. Her strong jaw and direct stare made her look every inch the clan matriarch she was.
