Chapter 1

Bark Shot

Patch Patterson aligned the buckhorn sights of his Winchester .30-30 carbine on the very edge of a thick-barked Ponderosa pine standing alone on a hillside several hundred feet from his field. The gunshot echoed off the Virginian Ridge mountainside and reverberated across the valley.

The tree exploded outward in a spray of bark fragments and wood splinters. The man beside the tree screamed, the side of his face and neck streaming blood. He lurched and spun around, dropping his binoculars. He ran shrieking up the steep hillside away from the old man’s field.

Serves the sneakin’ son of a bitch right, Patch mumbled to himself. He stepped from his hiding place inside the goat shed, walked to his cabin, and put the rifle back on its pegs above the kitchen door.

He’d seen the stranger last week slipping around the edges of his property, and saw him again two days ago. Each time the man stayed inside the timber just outside Patch’s hillside fence. He was there for a long time scanning Patch’s cabin, barn, and sheds through his binoculars. The man often lowered his glasses to write in a notebook.

The first time he’d seen the stranger Patch started across his field to approach the man, but he ran away along the hillside before Patch could get near him. Patch followed his tracks until he heard a car door slam. It sped away before Patch could get a look at it.