Page 123 of Devil in Disguise
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Marble Hill Ranch
Dyma had worriedabout what she’d think of the ranch. She was lousy at hiding her feelings, which meant that if it was awful, she’d show it. She’d been raised in the middle of the mountains, on the shores of an enormous glacial lake, and she’d read somewhere that the scenery you grew up with tended to make you feel at home forever.
Well, except for the beach. Everybody liked the beach, and almost nobody had grown up there, right? So maybe it was like that. Maybe you’d learn to …
She was telling herself that, but with every mile Owen drove north from the Wyoming line, her heart sank a little more. This place seemed to have nothing going for it but flatness. Flat as a pancake. Flat as a piece of paper. Flat as aboard.There were some clouds, but the sun was shining, so gloominess wasn’t an excuse. In some places, there was green-grass flatness, with some patches of snow. In others, there was brown-dirt flatness. With some patches of snow.
“What do they grow here?” she asked. When you learned more about a place, you liked it better, right?
“Hay and alfalfa,” Owen said. “Wheat. Dry beans. Sugar beets. Like that. Lots of alfalfa, though. Cattle feed.”
“Oh.” He was slowing to thirty-five, because there was a town here. If a “town” could be a collection of mobile homes, a café approximately the size of a living room, and some grain elevators.
The town was named Chugwater.
Wonderful.
A tanker truck blasted by in the opposite direction, and the pickup rocked, because there was nothing out here to block the wind, and it was sure blowing.
Whiting, Wyoming. Still flat, and still windy. A blue sign flashed by, the kind for services. It said there were two gas stations ahead, plus a café and a motel.
“Not far now,” Owen said. “That’s the first sign for Wheatland.”
“Great,” she said, because what elsedidyou say? And reminded herself,What do you care whether his ranch is pretty? What’s it to you? Were you thinking you were going to marry him and move here? It’sWyoming.There’s no astronautics industry in Wyoming.
“OK?” Owen asked. Oh, look. They were in Wheatland. Yay. He took an exit off the highway, then a left across an overpass, and kept driving. Well, of course he did. The ranch wasn’t going to be in town.
“Yeah,” she said. “It just doesn’t look … exactly the way I imagined it. Which is fine,” she hurried to add. “I’m sure it’s really nice. The sky and all. Wide open spaces. Peace and quiet. Cowboy, take me away, and so forth.”
He smiled. “Fifteen miles. Almost there. Hang on.”
They passed an Exxon station, which was the last thing before you were, yep, out of town, and Dyma asked, “Shouldn’t you get gas?”
“Nope. We have our own tank. Lots of equipment to gas up. Plus, it doesn’t happen often, but you can get snowed in up here, especially up high.”
He was still driving. There were some low mountains in the distance. That was slightly more promising. “So is where you are … up high?”
“Higher than here, anyway.”
Still flat. A left onto a gravel road after ten miles or so, and they were driving southwest. The land was beginning to undulate, the line of hills closer. “Look behind us,” Owen said. “Those are the Laramie Mountains to the north. The ranch is at the very south end of the range.”
“Oh.”
The pickup started to climb, and the land was changing. Huge boulders and rocky cliffs, grass, and pine trees, and always, those patches of snow. He glanced at her, and she’d swear his amusement grew. “You’re looking mighty relieved. Let me guess. You thought it was some flat patch of dirt, all beaten up by cattle, with a doublewide parked in the middle of it under the only tree. Flies, probably. Smell.”
She was laughing. She couldn’t help it. It was the relief.“Owen.I was working so hard on being encouraging! I was trying to tell myself I didn’t love you for your ranch. You weren’t supposed tonotice.”
He started to laugh, too, and then the road was ending in a fence, and the ranch gate she’d seen in the picture, a log set upright on either side of the road and another one spanning them, exactly like a ranch gate should look.Marble Hill Ranch,the burned-in letters on the top log said. Owen said, “Be kinda funny to name it Marble Hill if there wasn’t even a hill, don’t you think? I’m not that ironic.” He pushed a button, the gate opened, and he said, “That’s the only one that opens like that. Rules on a ranch: close every gate. Normally, that’s the passenger’s job. Hopping out to open them, then closing them once the driver goes through.”
“Except when we’re riding a horse.”
“Yep. Then I dismount and open and close the gate.” The truck was climbing some more, because the ground sloped gently up, and then not so gently, all the way to the rocky cliffs.
“Marble Mountain,” Owen said. “Named for all that pretty white marble in the cliffs.” He rounded a corner, and buildings came into view. Metal-roofed sheds and a huge red barn, exactly like the toy one she’d had as a little girl, with all the plastic animals stored inside. It had the rounded, peaked roof and the little doors at the top.
It wasn’t like she’d never seen a barn, though. She was from Idaho. She’d seen plenty of barns. She’dbeenin barns. Why did all this feel so special?
