But if the winter had been hard, the snowmelt descended from the high country in dark, churning torrents, taking out roads, drowning fields and ranges.

Life was tough everywhere, Cord knew, but it took a special kind of stick-with-it to farm or run a ranch in Montana, even with decent equipment and enough capital to make it from one season to the next. Smaller outfits went under on a regular basis, all too often taking the hard work, hope and sacrifice of several generations down with them, but a surprising number held on, somehow.

Folks out here had plenty of backbone, and they kept their complaints to themselves.

The old-timers were particularly durable; the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse could ride in, wreaking their predicted havoc, and these veterans of peace and war, hardship and plenty, would swear up and down it was nothing compared to that drought or wildfire or recession way back when.

As far as these descendants of pioneers were concerned, the West in general—and Montana in particular—was no place for the timid or the easily discouraged.

And, being neither, Cord pretty much agreed.

So, no, it hadn’t been the weather that made him jittery.

As the clouds gathered, darkening from pale gray to an ominous shade of ebony over the course of the day, a prelightning charge pulsed in the air, almost audible.

And then, between one heartbeat and the next, she was there.

The specter blew in through the rear door of Sully’s place, the creak of its rusty hinges muted by a blast of thunder and, as if to ratchet up the drama a notch or two, a bolt of lightning struck just the other side of the vacant lot behind the bar, briefly illuminating the figure from behind.

Although her arrival was relatively mundane—no shimmering ectoplasm, rattling chains or harrowing moans—the effect was still creepy, in a Wes Craven kind of way.

Cord, who was holding his first decent hand of the evening, one jack short of a royal flush, instantly dropped his cards.

J.P. turned in his chair, following Cord’s gaze, and abruptly froze.

Eli, focused on his cards, took a while to shift mental gears and notice that Cord and J.P. were staring at something behind him.

Frowning, he swiveled, registered the slender haunt standing just inside the cardroom, rain lashing through the opening and pooling on the uneven floor around her feet.

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

“Reba?” J.P. murmured, very quietly, like a man talking in his sleep.

J.P.’s retired service dog, Trooper, didn’t move or make a sound.