Rescued by the Farmer (18 page)

Dear Reader,

I hope you enjoyed your visit to Oaks Crossing!

The opening scene of this book was inspired by my own near-miss with a dive-bombing hawk who was more intent on snagging his breakfast than avoiding my car. After my heart rate settled back down, I realized that I’d been more concerned about him being injured (or worse) than I was about the potential damage to my windshield. From there, Bekah Holloway’s life-altering encounter with Rosie and the other residents of the Oaks Crossing Rescue Center took shape. Because the animals weren’t the only ones in need of saving, the story became one about confronting a difficult past, putting it to rest and moving on to a bright new future.

Getting to know Bekah was fascinating, but learning about Drew proved to be just as interesting. There was more to the charming, easygoing middle Kinley brother than met the eye, and as Bekah’s fondness for him grew, so did mine. Putting aside his own dreams to stay in Oaks Crossing and support his family showed a lot of character, and his willingness to give Bekah the help she so desperately needed made him just what she calls him: an everyday hero.

He’s the type of person who steps up day in and day out, doing what they can to make their slice of the world a nicer place. They’re the teachers who stay longer at school to give our kids some one-on-one time, or a neighbor who notices that our driveway is buried in snow and drives his plow over to help us clear it out. Sometimes, they take their tractor down to mow an overgrown playground not because they’ll get paid to do it, but because they want kids to enjoy the park.

Those are my kind of people, and my real-life small town is full of them. I sincerely hope you know a few of them, too, because they make life better for all of us.

If you’d like to stop by for a visit, you’ll find me online at www.miaross.com, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads and Pinterest. When you get a chance, send me a message in your favorite format. I’d love to hear from you!

Mia Ross

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Arizona Homecoming

by Pamela Tracy

Chapter One

Y
ellowish-brown shards rose to the surface at the edge of Donovan Russell’s shovel. They were a startling contrast to the hard mud-brown dirt he’d been digging in.

“Should have left well enough alone,” he muttered.

After a few run-ins with local special interests—okay, one rabble-rouser with amazing dark brown eyes, on a mission—the Baer custom-built house was finally back on schedule but a bit over budget. Not that money mattered. Just last night George Baer had called asking for a circular driveway along with one that led to the backyard and a three-car garage. As the site architect and builder, Donovan had merely said,
Yes,
sir, we can do that.

Looking at the marking paint that now highlighted where the circular drive might go, Donovan decided maybe he shouldn’t have gotten so annoyed at the one spot where the dirt curved upward and kept his imagined drive from being level.

Annoyed was one thing; acting on it another. A backhoe would have been easier to use on this alkaline clay-based dirt that threatened to bend his shovel. Yes, it was that hard.

“I overreacted,” Donovan muttered. Not that there was anyone to hear him. He was miles from the nearest neighbor and living alone in a camper.

Adding a circular driveway would not take that much time, and if he needed to start his next custom job a few weeks late, no one would protest. In his line of work, behind schedule was a way of life. One he personally didn’t appreciate.

Donovan hated when his schedule changed. Still, the change was on Baer’s dime, and Donovan’s goal was to please the customer. Someday, he wanted to please himself, build homes, tree houses, businesses that matched their environment, were one of a kind and affordable.

He had two years left with Tate Luxury Homes. He’d promised to finish his contract and pay off his debt to Nolan Tate, and he’d keep his word. Breaking up with Olivia Tate had been a serious step backward in recovering from a poor career choice. The breakup had, however, been a huge step forward in finding peace.

Not that he’d experienced much peace lately.

His next job was in Palmdale, California. The sun was more polite there. After that, three jobs in Florida. Then, the freedom to choose where, when and how often he worked.

He dug the shovel in a bit deeper, ignoring the sweat gathering at his hairline.

A Nebraska boy through and through, Donovan couldn’t believe that at five in the morning
in June
the Arizona sun was able to stretch out her fingers with an extremely heated “I’m here for the rest of the day” massage.

Fine, tomorrow he’d start work at four.

Who would choose to live in this heat? Almost immediately, he smiled. His favorite special-interest advocate was a slip of a woman named Emily Hubrecht. She’d shown up at the job site the first day, spouting something about the property next to the Baers’, empty and neglected, that had yielded some Native American pottery a few decades ago. She was sure more was to be found, maybe even a burial ground, and that the home he was building might prevent a historic discovery of epic proportions.

Her words, not his.

He had, however, enjoyed the few weeks she’d poked and prodded the land. Emily was more entertaining than the men working with him. She’d found no proof, and so his permits had been given.

She hadn’t changed her way of thinking.

It was something they had in common. They could see potential even in the dirt on a forlorn piece of the Arizona desert.

When she’d scowled at the permits in his hand and raised defiant eyes to his, he found himself promising,
I find any arrowheads, pots, or bows and arrows, I’ll give them right to you.
He’d do it, too, because it was the right thing to do.

The dirt gave way to something with more substance as Donovan gently nudged with his shovel.

Bones.

A brief sorrow washed over him at the thought of some long-ago child standing over an aged Fido and saying goodbye. Maybe it was time to get a four-legged companion. Not that Donovan was ever lonely. He was far too busy for that.

At least that’s what he told himself late at night in a tiny camper with one bed, one table, a minuscule kitchen and a bathroom so small that taking a shower meant one foot in and one foot out of the tub.

Except for the heat, Donovan enjoyed his time here. This part of Arizona was rich in history and the kind of rural lifestyle he’d grown up with. Everyone knew each other. He’d not been in town more than two days before the waitress at the Miner’s Lamp knew his favorite meal and the grocery store manager knew what brand of cereal he preferred. Even the Hubrecht family, save Emily, seemed to like him. Her father had built the Lost Dutchman Ranch’s main building and kept asking Donovan for advice on updating.

Then, too, Donovan had received a dozen invitations to church, even from the enchanting Emily, and one marriage proposal. He’d nicely refused them all.

Moving the shovel, he unearthed another bone. The Baer home stood a good twenty miles from its nearest neighbor. Strange place for a dog to be buried. A homeless mutt might have died on the spot, but this was somewhat deep and definitely had been here awhile.

Smokey Begay, the construction crew’s foreman, parked on what would someday be a real driveway. Stepping from his truck, he squinted, and then came to stand beside Donovan. “What are you doing?”

Eerie how the man knew every time Donovan needed something, whether it be advice, a tool or simply another hand to get a job done quicker.

“Baer wants a circular driveway, too,” Donovan explained. “I thought I’d dig a rough outline.”

“Why did you stop digging?”

“Bones,” Donovan said, only this time he wasn’t thinking of a crying boy and a beloved dog.

Smokey took a step backward, his demeanor going from curious to stoic in a blink. “This is not good.”

“I tend to agree.” Over the years Donovan had found old toys, bullets and once a vintage pair of glasses—very Benjamin Franklinish. He kept those on the dashboard of his truck.

Donovan pushed his shovel deeper in the hard dirt, his gut already telling him what he didn’t want to know. “Dogs do have femurs?” he asked Smokey hopefully, his question more a statement.

“Yes, but not even a Great Dane would have a femur like that,” Smokey said.

It took only five minutes to uncover the human skull.

* * *

Emily Hubrecht finished pinning the flyer advertising Apache Creek Library Celebrates Sixty Years to the bulletin. Then, she put up a separate flyer about the hour of Native American storytelling she’d be donating to the library to help with the festivities.

It had been a while since she’d made time to do what she loved most: storytelling. During the school year she visited the sixth grade for American History Month. Every once in a while, she’d get a call from Phoenix or Tucson asking for her services. In reality, most of her storytelling happened as she guided the museum’s visitors up and down the aisles. That didn’t feel like storytelling, though. It felt more like a documentary narrative.

Outside, gravel crunched, heralding visitors. Emily watched as two people exited the minivan that had parked in front of her museum. She waited for a dozen kids to burst from the doors but not even one pigtailed head showed.

So far today, twelve patrons had signed the museum’s register. Emily wanted, prayed for, a hundred and fifty. How could people not fall in love the with Apache Creek’s artifacts, history and folklore?

She blamed the museum’s name. The Lost Dutchman Museum. Really? Only a small portion of the museum dealt with old Jacob Waltz—nicknamed the Lost Dutchman—and his irrelevant, misguided contribution to the history of the Superstition Mountains. The majority of displays had to do with the ancient and not-so-ancient inhabitants who’d left behind tangible relics and folklore.

The woman from the van was dressed to the nines and didn’t look the type to be impressed with old mining paraphernalia or Native American treasures. She seemed more suited to a Porsche than minivan. Emily moved closer to the window. Ah, a rental.

The man appeared much older, wearing white pants and a suit jacket. Those pants would stay clean sixty seconds in this museum immersed in history and dust.

They entered the foyer with a sense of entitlement. Emily didn’t mind. These were the kind of tourists who might spend money on one of the many books in the tiny gift area, maybe even buy a Native American woven blanket. “May I help you?”

“We’re looking for pieces from old movie sets?” the man answered. “To buy. We heard John Wayne liked this part of Arizona, and I’m a collector.”

“We did have many Westerns shot here,” Emily began. “Not just John Wayne, but Audie—”

“Just John Wayne,” the man said firmly.

Emily shook her head. “I’ve a few things from the days when Westerns were shot here but they’re not on display yet and none are for sale.”

The couple turned away without even glancing past the foyer, heading for the exit.

Emily tried again. “We’ve got Native American artifacts thousands of years old and—”

They closed the front door behind them before Emily could try enticing them with her storytelling skills that would transport them to another era.

“John Wayne would appreciate my artifacts and stories,” Emily muttered and glanced at the clock. It was almost noon. She closed at four, when the sun shot past high and went to
burning
. Most tourists would be thinking of eating and returning to their hotels for a dip in the pool.

She headed back to the Salado room. It was tiny compared to the rest, with just a few bowls and farming utensils on display. After unlocking the glass cabinet, she pulled a pair of gloves from her back pocket, put them on and then retrieved a tiny reddish bowl with faded black-and-white paint etched on the sides. As she walked back to her office, her fingers gently gripped the bowl, reveling in an artifact from such a distant era.

Who had it belonged to? A young bride, a grandmother, a wife in charge of feeding many? Emily was half–Native American, from the Hopi tribe, and was writing her family’s history. One of her many projects. Her father said she’d get more done if she could settle on doing one job at a time.

She didn’t like the word
time
. Time was something you could run out of, like her mother had. Emily didn’t want someone a thousand years from today to say,
Yes, I’ve heard of the Hopi, but really, all they left were a few belongings we can fit in this tiny corner of the room.
Emily wanted the world to know about her mom’s family from the Kykotsmovi Village, near Holbrook. She wanted to paint with words the Soyal ceremony when young girls received their kachinas. She wanted the Hopi Butterfly Dance to live on through storytelling as well as practice.

When she made it back to her desk, she took out a box and started fitting packing paper inside. She was lending the bowl to the Heard Museum in Phoenix. They were doing a display of forgotten tribes and had contacted her just two weeks ago, wanting to find out what she knew.

They read her paper on the Salado. Her first published piece as a college student majoring in Native American studies. The curator hadn’t even known she was a local, hadn’t known she was the new curator of the Lost Dutchman Museum.

A tumbleweed scooted across the parking lot and disappeared down the same road as the minivan.

Emily secured the bowl, sure that it wouldn’t suffer a crack even if the Phoenix Suns used the package for basketball practice, and after taking off her gloves, headed for the tiny break room, thinking she’d eat lunch although she wasn’t hungry.

The phone rang before she managed three steps.

“Emily,” Sam Miller said. He was part of the four-man police team that kept Apache Creek safe.

“What is it, Sam?”

“They’ve uncovered bones at the end of Ancient Trails Road, the Baer place.”

An epic house in the middle of nowhere. There’d been protests, mostly from Emily, who filed petitions about protecting the wilderness and the land that was once home to the Native people. She’d managed to delay a permit until she had a chance to look over the property. She just knew it had been a Native American village centuries ago. All her research pointed to that spot. The architect, one Donovan Russell, had taken to saluting her should she come close, as if she were some...well, never mind that. And, at least saluting was preferable to the irritated look he’d given her the last time she’d filed a protest.

“How old?”

“Old enough. It’s a skeleton, and it’s been there awhile and could be a Native American.” He didn’t sound happy.

She’d been right all along.

The Baers were building right where an ancient settlement had thrived. There had to be a plethora of artifacts just waiting to be found.

What if today was the day?

Emily didn’t smile. Chances were the location had already been compromised. Now, Donovan Russell would have to listen. If he’d damaged the skeleton or anything surrounding it, he’d have desecrated a venerable object.

A felony!

He should have listened to her.

Copyright © 2016 by Pamela Tracy Osback