The Cowboy's Shadow.

A Novel of Romantic Suspense.

By Marty Voght.

To Ray.

Chapter One.

The tree house was gone. Not just the house, but the entire, towering elm tree that had supported it.

Kyla realized, two blocks too late, that she had missed the corner of Elm Street. She wheeled into the hospital parking lot to turn around, and was confronted with a crush of traffic. What was going on? A cholera epidemic in Argentia, Nevada? Not one vacant s.p.a.ce, cars waiting, and a delivery truck blocking half the lane. She followed the narrow, winding drive, without the slightest idea where it headed, breathed easier when she saw two empty parking stalls. Just enough width to turn around. She had shifted into reverse when she spotted the white crosses on the pavement and the red sign. "Ambulance Only."

Kyla stepped on the gas - after all, she wasn't going to park, only turn around.

At that instant a pickup truck loomed in her rear view mirror; she slammed on her brakes. The truck skidded into the ambulance s.p.a.ce, tires squealing. The driver leaped out -- a blur of wide hat, boots, slim jeans -- and dashed around the pickup, leaving his door open wide. He jerked at the opposite door, and the pa.s.senger tumbled into his arms. The cowboy staggered up the emergency ramp, the sick man's head lolling, his arms hanging limp.

In her mind's eye Kyla saw the bustle in the emergency room.Where do you need me ? She resolutely erased the scene.A vacation . Two weeks free of medical journals, textbooks, of tailing a doctor through corridors smelling of industrial cleaners. Two weeks in which she need not crowd with other students into hospital rooms housing unique agonies.

With the truck blocking her way, she had no room to turn. She drove on, into a maze of equipment sheds, where she finally discovered a vacancy. Hospital vehicles only. A quick in and out, Kyla headed back the way she had come, edging past the brown pickup, door still standing wide, and the delivery truck, taking up even more s.p.a.ce because men had stacked white boxes on the shady side.

Kyla turned onto Main Street, grateful for the light traffic. Residents of the Nevada desert did their shopping and errands earlier in the day, not in the heat of a June afternoon. The house on the corner of Elm and Main looked naked without the tree. Like a bald man surprised by visitors before he had a chance to grab his hairpiece. The owners of the house must miss the shade of the tree, particularly on a day as hot as today.

Kyla moved her lips as she counted seven houses on the right, all identical, all built by the mining companies five decades ago for managers and supervisors. She braked at the thicket of junipers, swung into the driveway just beyond, and parked under the cottonwood tree that shaded Mark and Glenda's front yard. One foot on the ground, her head beyond the influence of the air conditioner, even in the shade the heat seemed solid. She stretched her cramped arms. As soon as the sun went down she would take a walk.

"Come inside and do your stretching in the cool," Glenda called from the front door. Kyla grabbed her rucksack and jogged through the white heat reflecting off the walk.

"The tree's gone," she said as she embraced her sister. "I drove right past your street."

"We all miss it. One of the biggest trees in town, seventy-five or eighty years old. Mark says it was planted right after the town drilled deep wells and built the water system. Before that, Argentia didn't have enough water to irrigate lawns and trees."

"Water!" Kyla snapped her fingers. "A fine idea."

"Iced tea in the frig."

"Better yet." She followed Glenda into the kitchen. "Why'd they cut the elm?"

"Diseased. The whole center had rotted out. Trace and his friends were painting protest signs, until Mark marched them down the street and showed them how the tree might fall on the house. They had dreams of rebuilding the tree house -- "

"Where is Trace?" Kyla asked. On every previous visit her nephew had bowled her over with his enthusiastic greeting.

Glenda placed the iced tea on the table, sucked her upper lip behind her lower, a gesture of unhappiness Kyla had learned to recognize as a little sister.

Glenda wrapped her hands around the gla.s.s as if to warm it.

"Trace is with friends. They're very troubled." Twelve-years-old, the beginnings of adolescent vagaries, Kyla thought. "A boy died last week, one of Trace's cla.s.smates."

Kyla paused with the gla.s.s at her lips. "Accident?"

"No, the flu. It ended in some dreadful kind of pneumonia, and he died in a few hours. Of course Carl was -- "

"Carl?"

"The boy who died. You never met him, his folks came to Argentia just three months ago. His father worked for the salvage company that's shutting down the Pollux Mine. Anyway, Carl was an asthmatic, the doctor says his lungs were weak.

But that's scant comfort to parents. We've all memorized the symptoms: fatigue, nausea, fever, then gasping..." The words trailed away, she sipped her tea.

"Every mother I know walks the same tight rope. Schools out, we can't keep the kids home, under our noses. But what kind of flu? And where did he pick it up?"

"Must be hard for the kids," Kyla said, wishing she had answers to Glenda's questions.

"Carl's family simply picked up and left town the day after he died. I understand the kids' feelings. I mean, the family was here only temporarily, but Carl had gone to school with them, and the kids feel -- " she struggled for a word "-- left out. Abandoned. They've had no ritual to mark Carl's death. A psychologist would speak of closure, but I'm unable to maintain a psychologist's distance and objectivity. Everything struck too close to home."

Kyla heard a wistful tone behind Glenda's words, and suspected her sister missed her practice as a therapist more than she would admit.

"But," Glenda said, lifting her head and smiling, "the kids are solving the problem in their own way, which is why I can't expect Trace to stay home.

They're organizing a car wash and bake sale, to raise money for a memorial."

"'Fight the dying of the light'," Kyla said. Glenda nodded. Kyla recalled the crowd in the hospital parking lot. "Any other cases of flu in town?"

"Not that I've heard of."

"I turned around at the hospital, and it seemed half the town had business there."

Glenda laughed. "Jackie Kelley delivered triplets yesterday, and anyone with any excuse whatsoever must go. They're identical, I understand. Boys. The very thought of three at one time gives me the shivers. But at least it's a morale builder for the nurses. Last week was rather horrible, a child dying, with them standing by, helpless, not able to do a thing."

"Today's not totally good," Kyla said. "While I was hunting a place to turn around, a cowboy drove up with a sick man. Or hurt maybe."

"Ranch work's so dangerous. Every year someone's thrown from a horse, or crushed by machinery. Right now it's sunstroke, and last winter two men lost toes to frostbite. But the mines are almost as bad. I worry about Mark."

"He's the boss," Kyla said, hoping to ease Glenda's fears.

"He won't send a man where he won't go himself. So in emergencies, guess who leads the way?"

Kyla cast about for a more cheerful topic, but could not immediately think of a bright remark to distract her sister.

"Mom has hopes," Glenda said without warning. "She thinks you're coming to ask my advice in an affair of the heart."

Kyla's hand slipped, she tipped the gla.s.s too high and the ice slid down and hit her nose. "What?" she snorted.

"You're not?" Glenda did not even try to hide her disappointment.

"I'm in med school, remember. Four years, at least, before I can even think of having a personal life."

"Mom says Neil Walker's opened another business. He's already a millionaire."

"Good for Neil."

"Dr. Walker's very impressed that you're in med school. It's what he wanted for Neil."

"So as second choice he'll welcome a daughter-in-law with an M.D. When Neil was a senior, Mom and Flora Walker spent the year arranging for me and Neil to accidentally turn up at the same parties. Neil wouldn't look at a girl, and I wasn't interested in the school nerd. Won't Mom ever give up?"

"I told you, Neil's made a million, probably many millions, and he's only twenty- three."

"That's hardly a recommendation. He's exchanged a computer obsession for a money obsession. By the way, did you ever get Trace that computer he wanted for Christmas?"

Glenda made a face. "No. I'm not at all sure it's good for children to become -- " She laughed.

"Obsessed? Afraid he might turn into a Neil?"

Glenda nodded. "And, all the kids expect to be on line, and some of the things available...well, it can't be good for them. It's one reason I approved when Trace spent time with Carl. Carl loved to read. His folks had left most of their things in storage, since they'd be here only a few months. Carl borrowed every book Trace owned. Trace started going to the library with Carl, two, three times a week."

"Sounds like Carl was a good influence."

"That what makes it so hard," Glenda said. She steadied her chin in her hand.

"He was a lovely, lovely boy, and it's unbelievable -- unforgivable -- that he's gone. An only child, like Trace, and it makes me think we've made a mistake, investing everything in one. It seemed sensible at the time, one child, and when he started school I'd go back to work. But here we are, in the middle of nowhere. I've thought of opening a clinic, but I'm afraid cowboys and miners consider talking to a therapist an admission of weakness. I envy Jackie Kelley.

Three boys!"

Kyla tarried at the corner of Elm and Main, leaning over the fence to examine the broad stump. The center showed a dark circle of crumbling rot. She forced her legs into long steps on the four block walk into the center of town. Her muscles protested at first, then purred with relief. Past the hospital, the grocery store, the dry cleaners, where a closed sign hung at an awkward angle. A coffee shop? Impossible! Coffee shops, the ultimate symbols of yuppie urbanity, did not exist in mining towns.

She cupped her hands and stared through the polished gla.s.s, glimpsed the gleaming chrome of an espresso machine. She opened the door. A blast of frigid air, heavy with the aroma of coffee, enveloped her. Most of the s.p.a.ce was taken up by a long white counter and three gla.s.s-topped tables. An old desk leaned against the back wall, and on it a computer monitor glowed with the dancing colors of a screen saver. A teenaged girl stood behind the counter, almost hidden by three girls leaning from high stools. They all wore shorts, and bent their tight buns in the direction of a cowboy seated at a table. He did not seem interested in the cl.u.s.ter of femininity, but hunched over a Styrofoam cup.

Something familiar about him, Kyla thought.

She scanned the man surrept.i.tiously, boots to hat. The hat! In that split second appearance in her rear view mirror, her mind had unconsciously registered the flat crowned Stetson with its silver band, like those worn by the heroes in old westerns, the midnight movies of every local television station. The dirty brown pickup stood outside, directly in front of the coffee shop.

Kyla turned her attention back to the shop, and found the cowboy staring at her.

The meeting of eyes demanded some acknowledgment.

"I saw you at the hospital," she said lamely. He removed his hat and placed it on the table. Dark eyes, the beginnings of a beard on deeply tanned cheeks -- and bleakness that spoke the universal language of sorrow. He stood and gestured to an empty chair.

"The man you brought in?" she asked. He sat down heavily, grabbed the plastic cup with such force it nearly crumbled between his fingers. He drew himself up very straight, shook his head, the way men do when they struggle against emotion. Kyla wished she had not asked.

"Rod Harris. He was gone in half an hour," he said. He turned to the counter.

"Nicki, bring this lady a cup of coffee."

The girl behind the counter -- obviously Nicki -- detached herself from the cl.u.s.ter. "Coffees of the day are New Guinea, vanilla walnut and Kona," she said.

"Kona's the decaf."

"I got New Guinea." He blinked and the dark eyes cleared a trifle. "That's the closest to plain coffee, I think." His lips twisted slightly, a gesture that might indicate disapproval. His eyes were not black, but dark brown, with little streaks of black melting from the iris into the pupil. Kyla considered telling him that she shared his lack of enthusiasm for exotic coffee, but light conversation hardly seemed appropriate.

"You work at the hospital?" he asked.

"No. I was driving the white car that got in your way when you pulled up at the emergency entrance. I'm from out of town, visiting my sister." She extended a hand. "Kyla Rogers."

"Whit. Short for Whitaker." His hands were long, narrow, callused, and dry, in the way of men who worked outdoors in the desert.

Nicki slid the cup across the table just as Kyla realized she had not carried her purse on her walk. She had no money. The cowboy flipped a dollar bill from his shirt pocket.

"If I'd taken Rod to the hospital sooner -- " He fiddled with the edge of the cup, bending, unbending. "But he wasn't awfully sick to begin with, and he was certain a day in the mountains would cure whatever ailed him, and it wasn't until noon today that he agreed he'd better see a doctor. By the time I hit the city limits he was gasping for breath, wasn't breathing at all when I carried him through that door, the nurse said."

A faint vibration sounded in the back of Kyla's mind. Something she should know, but could not quite remember. Something from a textbook, or a lecture.

"I hope nothing's going around," he said. "A boy died last week."

"Flu," Kyla said quickly. "He was a friend of my nephew. An asthmatic, the virus settled in his weakened lungs."

"You're from out of town?" he said.

"San Francisco."

"City girl." A flat statement, containing neither disapproval nor admiration.

"Not really. I was raised on a vineyard north of Sacramento, but now I'm in med school in San Francisco. I just finished my first year, and I needed a couple weeks in wide open s.p.a.ces, so I decided to visit -- "

"Med school! Then you can tell me, what killed Rod Harris?"

"First year med school," she said firmly, amused and startled by his automatic confidence. "I can't venture a guess. The doctor must have an idea."

"Doc Temple's ordering tests. They're taking him to Reno -- Rod, that is -- to the medical center. I've got to know, because if it's something catching, he stayed in the range cabin with two other men night before last. I phoned the ranch from the hospital. So far Jim and Vince feel okay."

Range cabin. The vibration in her head grew into the insistent tinkling of a bell. Bold type, on the right-hand page, not quite in focus, just beyond the threshold of recollection.

"What were his symptoms?" she asked, imitating his level tone to conceal her rising excitement. A medical journal, but months ago, and she had read only the first page or two, for the disease had not seemed relevant to a big city practice.

"Weak and out of sorts for a couple days, then a fever, aching bones, like the flu, then this morning he was terribly sick." He took two large swallows of coffee. "Dying," he whispered.

But that's how Glenda described Carl's illness.Something going around. The thought of being on the front line of an epidemic caused a shiver down her spine.

"I shouldn't have let Rod go up the mountain when he wasn't tip-top, but he said the mountain air -- "

"Is that computer on-line?" she asked, jerking a thumb over her shoulder.

"Haven't the faintest idea," he said. "This is the first time I've been in here."