Finnegan had driven a series of steel pipes into the ground near the water along the creek. Occasionally he would stop, listen for a long while, then uproot a pipe and sink it elsewhere.

“And the purpose of the steel pipes?”

“They act as an antenna to redirect the energy flow.” He must have heard the skepticism in Russell’s voice. “I don’t make rain, Mr. Corbett. Only God makes it rain. I influence the weather. The earth is your mother.” He lifted his arms and raised his face toward the heavens. “I reach out to her to redirect the jet stream.” As he dropped his hands, he added, “Prayer is good, too.”

“Have you ever not made it rain?” Russell had to ask.

The rainmaker smiled his twisted smile, the dark eyes shining. “Ranchers have been known to string up men who don’t make it rain. I’m still alive, aren’t I?”

When Finnegan finally quit for the day to return to his tent at Trafton Park in Whitehorse, Russell had gone by the farmhouse to check on Dulcie.

Seeing that she’d gone left him torn between disappointment and worry. What would she do next? Maybe she’d given up on this quest to find out more about Laura Beaumont and had returned to Chicago. Without saying goodbye?

That thought filled him with a sense of loss for a woman he’d known less than forty-eight hours. But then again, a woman like Dulcie Hughes got under a man’s skin immediately.

He told himself she wouldn’t leave without telling him goodbye, but he wasn’t completely sure about that. He was, however, sure she wasn’t the kind to give up easily and he doubted she’d solved the mystery this afternoon in that old house.

As he drove toward the ranch, he thought he must have conjured her from his imagination because a car like Dulcie’s rental was headed down the road toward him right now, coming from the wrong direction.

Why would she be coming from Old Town Whitehorse?

He slowed the pickup, pulling to the side to let her pass.

She slowed and then seemed to reluctantly pull to a stop next to his pickup. He waited as she whirred down her window and smiled but not before he’d seen the exhaustion in her face.

“You look tired,” he said.

She didn’t deny it, confirming that she was dead on her feet. The strain of her quest, no doubt.

“Have you had anything to eat?”

“Breakfast,” she said with the quirk of her mouth. “It gave me indigestion.”

“I don’t think it was the food. Park your rig in that turnoff behind you and come with me. No arguments for once in your life.”