It provided little more than a sliver of light. The stars had seemed so far away, scattered across the heavens above the tall, dark trees. Claire had wanted to hurry, but she’d forced herself to drive slowly on the twisting dirt roads, to watch carefully for each of the turns that would take her to the Tally Ranch. If she missed one, she knew, it could take hours to get back on the track. Going slowly paid off. She found the entrance to the ranch with ease, though it was nothing more than a break in a barbed-wire fence with a rutted dirt driveway running through it. Claire turned into the driveway, which made a loop in front of the weathered house. She drove into a yard of dust and weeds. Parked among the weeds were a tractor that had seen better days and two beat-up pickup trucks. Behind the house, where the pasture land flowed away to timbered hills, the wild grass was still green that early in the year. It appeared silver, though, by moonlight. One lone horse grazed there, a swaybacked fellow, even to Claire’s untrained eye.
