Winter Moon

reporter will probably even print your address. You've got to be ready

for anything these days, anything."

Alma's paranoia, which came as such a surprise and which seemed so out

of character, chilled Heather. Even as she shivered at the icy glint

in her friend's eyes, however, a part of her wondered if Alma's

assessment of the situation was more rational than it sounded. That

she could seriously consider such a paranoid view was enough to make

her shiver again, harder than before.

"You've got to prepare for the worst," Alma Bryson said, picking up the

shotgun, turning it over in her hands. "It's not just your life on the

line.

You've got Toby to think about too."

She stood there, a slender and pretty black woman, an aficionado of

jazz and opera, a lover of museums, educated and refined, as warm and

loving a person as anyone Heather had ever known, capable of a smile

that would charm wild beasts and a musical laugh that angels might have

envied, holding a shotgun that looked absurdly large and evil in the

hands of someone so lovely and delicate, who had embraced rage because

the only alternative to rage was suicidal despair. Alma was like a

figure on a poster urging revolution, not a real person but a wildly

romanticized symbol. Heather had the disquieting feeling that she was

not looking at merely one troubled woman struggling to elude the grasp

of bitter grief and disabling hopelessness but at the grim future of

their entire troubled society, a harbinger of an all-obliterating

storm.

"Tearing it down brick by brick," Alma said solemnly, "but building

nothing to replace it."

CHAPTER SEVEN.

For twenty-nine uneventful nights, the Montana stillness was disturbed

only by periodic fits of winter wind, the hoot of a hunting owl, and

the distant forlorn howling of timber wolves. Gradually Eduardo

Fernandez regained his usual confidence and ceased to regard each

oncoming dusk with quiet dread.

He might have recovered his equilibrium more quickly if he'd had more

work to occupy him. Inclement weather prevented him from performing

routine maintenance around the ranch, with electric heat and plenty of

cord wood for the fireplaces, he had little to do during the winter

months except hunker down and wait for spring.

It had never been a working ranch since he had managed it. Thirty-four

years ago, he and Margaret had : been hired by Stanley Quartermass, a

wealthy film producer, who had fallen in love with Montana and wanted a

second home there. No animals or crops were raised for profit, the

ranch was strictly a secluded hideaway.

Quartermass loved horses, so he built a comfortable, , heated stable

with ten stalls a hundred yards south of the house. He spent about two

months per year at the ranch, in one- and two-week visits, and it was

Eduardo's duty, in the producer's absence, to ensure that the horses

received first-rate care and plenty of exercise. Tending to the

animals and keeping the property in good repair had constituted the

largest part of his job, and Margaret had been the housekeeper.

Until eight years ago, Eduardo and Margaret had lived in the cozy,

two-bedroom, single-story caretaker's house. That fieldstone structure

stood eighty or ninety yards behind--and due west of--the main house,

cloistered among pines at the edge of the higher woods. Tommy, their

only child, had been raised there until city life exerted its fatal

attraction when he was eighteen.

When Stanley Quartermass died in a private-plane crash, Eduardo and

Margaret had been surprised to learn that the ranch had been left to

them, along with sufficient funds to allow immediate retirement. The

producer had taken care of his four ex-wives while he was alive and had

fathered no children from any of his marriages, so he used the greater

part of his estate to provide generously for key employees.

They had sold the horses, closed up the caretaker's house, and moved

into the Victorian-style main house, with its gables, decorative

shutters, scalloped eaves, and wide porches. It felt strange to be a

person of property, but the security was welcome even--or perhaps

especially--when it came late in life.

Now Eduardo was a widowed retiree with plenty of security but with too

little work to occupy him. And with too many strange thoughts preying

on his mind Luminous trees ...

On three occasions during March, he drove his Jeep Cherokee into

Eagle's Roost, the nearest town. He ate at Jasper's Diner because he

liked their Salisbury steak, home fries, and pepper slaw. He bought

magazines and a few paperback books at the High Plains Pharmacy, and he

shopped for groceries at the only supermarket. His ranch was just

sixteen miles from Eagle's Roost, so he could have gone daily if he'd

wished, but three times a month was usually enough. The town was

small, three to four thousand souls, however, even in its isolation, it

was too much a part of the modern world to appeal to a man as

accustomed to rural peace as he was.

Each time he'd gone shopping, he'd considered stopping at the county