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All That Is Secret (An Annalee Spain Mystery)

By Patricia Raybon

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Prologue

November 1922

The little baby was four hours old. Still unwashed. Barely crying. But Joe Spain’s old ears recognized the sound. A human
infant. Somebody’s mistake left in the Colorado cold to die.

He twisted his mouth, pulled the reins on his cutting horse,
Barrel, and turned into the freezing wind. Barrel’s ears stood
straight up, trembling. The horse heard it too. On the cold,
open plains, the wide early morning silence rendered every
sound bigger, as if magnified.

The cry was half a mile away. But Spain still heard it clear
as a bell.

“C’mon, girl,” he said to Barrel. “We best go see.”
He let the big horse pick her way through the frozen scrub
and prairie grass. A light snow the night before had dusted the
ground, leaving a far and white horizon under the blinding
blue sky.

The horse was fresh and eager, but already both of them
were breathing hard, their breath turning to white vapor in the
sharp, bracing frost.

Spain, a part-time cowboy, stood up in his stirrups and scanned the prairie with narrowed eyes, peering in all directions. His lean body, still skinny after sixty-odd years, steeled itself against the cold. As a Negro man, he knew some considered him out of place in such environs. But he had known
no place better or longer than these High Plains, and the pure
respect he felt for the rough landscape bordered on its own kind
of adoration, if not sheer awe.

Scanning the terrain, he stood in the freezing wind, the brim
of his worn wool Stetson pulled low and humbled in the shining, cold glare.
Then he saw the tracks. Footprints in light snow. He looked
beyond the traces and saw the county road. Right away, he
figured what had happened. Before daybreak, somebody drove
their vehicle down the road until it turned to dirt. Then they
hopped the low, barbed-wire fence that bordered the road,
trekked a cold mile into Lazy K pastureland, and looked for a
dip in the flat landscape.

There in the open, in a draw in the middle of the range,
they left the child. No attempt to bury it. Coyotes would eat
the evidence. Or a family of foxes.

As for the snowy footprints, they would melt in the dry air
and blazing sun—just as they were doing right now. By noon,
the cold prints would all be gone.

Spain nosed the horse to follow the tracks toward the sound.
If the child was going to make it, he’d have to find it now.

Sure enough, the cry was growing fainter. Barely a whimper
now. But finally he saw the bundle, wrapped in a torn piece of
dirty tarp.

The horse saw the dark bulge and pulled up, dug her hooves
into the cold ground.

“It’s okay, girl,” Spain said. He patted the animal’s neck,
slid out of his saddle, and dropped the reins. Barrel stood alert,
agitated but waiting.

Sighing, Spain crunched across the frozen grass and looked
down at the tarp. He pushed the hat back on his head and knelt
in the snow. Pulling back the tarp, he felt his gloved hands go
cold.

It can’t be. Not again.

The tiny child was wrapped in a man’s white dress shirt and
nothing else. Blood on its slick black hair had started to ice. The
baby was shivering, lips almost blue. A low moan, no longer a
cry, emerged from its tiny, perfect mouth.

“Lord Jesus, pretty little baby,” Spain said.

He reached down, picked up the child, flicked the bloody
ice off its head, letting the tarp fall off. “Good grief, what a
hateful way to enter this ol’ world.”

He opened his old shearling jacket, pressed the baby onto
his chest, breathed hot breath on its face, took off his gloves
with his teeth, and rubbed his large hands on the baby’s ice cold back. Coaxing it. Scolding it. “C’mon, little bit. Ol’ Joe’s got you.”

For half a second, he considered how easy it would be to
leave the child and turn back. Nobody would ever know. These
were bad, bad times. He didn’t need the bother. Besides, he was
leaving by train tonight to visit his only daughter, his Annalee.
In fact, after too many years, they finally were making some
kind of peace. His own sweet “little bit” girl, as he called her—
grown now and working hard and smart at barely twenty-three.
Why start trouble now with somebody else’s child?

He sighed and cradled the infant, letting the rank newborn smell fill his nostrils. He buttoned up his jacket as far as he could and turned toward the anxious horse. But at the last minute, he turned back for the tarp. The boss might want to see it. Or the police. Or somebody. He wasn’t sure. But Spain bent
down to bunch up the tarp in his arms.

Then, just as quick, he shook it out again, looking for—
what? A hidden note, a tarnished locket, some last-minute trinket tucked in by the baby’s mother, trying to make a wrong
thing right? Hoping to leave a piece of herself with the child
that others said must die?

But there was nothing, so Spain balled up the tarp again.
Holding the baby against him with one arm, he strapped the
tarp on his saddle with the other.

He mounted the horse, grabbed the reins, and clicked his
tongue. With a fast trot, Barrel carried him and the baby across
the open prairie to the ranch house.

It was a large and impressive adobe, set on the highest point
on the 2,800-acre spread. The owner, Lent Montgomery, was
busy inside. Spain figured as much. A sleek black car was parked
in the gravel yard next to the sprawling house. The entire ranch
and acreage were for sale. Everybody in Denver knew that.

Fancy cars with bidders and bankers had been coming and
going for weeks.

But Spain knew his place. He didn’t like interrupting.
Still, he tied up the horse and walked across the gravel to the
big front door. Pulled the bell. Knocked twice. Not too hard.
After a while, a young Mexican girl barely opened the door.
The cook’s daughter.

Spain pushed back his hat. “Need to see the boss. Hurry,
little bit, and go get him.”

The girl looked him over, her gaze stopping at the bulge in
his jacket. She shook her head. Started to close the door.
Spain stuck his grimy boot in it. “This can’t wait.”
The girl considered this. Looked over her shoulder. Looked
back at Spain. Saw he wasn’t backing down.

“Sí, señor,” she whispered. “Okay.”

She moved to close the door, but Spain pushed his worn
boot in farther. “I’ll wait inside.”

The girl frowned for a second but yielded.
Spain stepped into a wide foyer and looked to his right
down a hallway. The carved door at the end was closed, voices
rising on the other side.

The girl wrung her hands. Fretting and sighing, she rushed
down another hallway. In a few minutes, she came back, not
with the boss but with a woman. Her mother the cook, Rosita
Montez. The woman looked annoyed. She wiped her hands on
her apron.

“What now, Joe?” she whispered. “Mr. Montgomery’s in a
meeting.”

Spain shifted the cold baby inside his jacket. “I know, Rosie,
but I really need to see him.”

“Well, you can’t! He’s in a big meeting!”

“But I found something. Look here . . .”
Spain yanked open his worn jacket. The baby’s bloody head
emerged.

The girl moaned, jumped back. “Mamá, Dios mío.”

But the woman took one look and understood immediately.
She shouted to the child in Spanish and the girl ran off.

Together, Rosita and Spain pulled off his coat. He held on
to the baby as they knelt on the slate floor of the foyer. Rosita bunched Spain’s jacket into a bundle and reached for the baby.
She laid it in the leather nest.

But they both knew. It was too late.

The baby’s limp, dead body sank into the folds of the coat.
Spain sighed. He closed the baby’s eyes. “I’m so sorry, little
bit. I’m so god-awful sorry.”

Rosita shook her head and started to weep, loudly blessing the child in Spanish, caressing its little hands, kissing its bloody
forehead, not worrying about silencing her sobs. The daughter,
returning with blankets and a metal basin, dropped them in a
clanging heap, water sloshing all directions. She, too, started
to sob.

Spain reached out to comfort.

A door slammed open. “For the love of . . . !”

A tall, silvery man stormed down the hall into the foyer.
Spain looked up at his angry boss, Lent Montgomery, and
clambered to his feet. He pulled off his hat, pointed to the
bundle. “A little baby, boss.”

The boss looked down at the bunched-up jacket, the dead
infant, the bloody white shirt, the mess on his foyer floor. He
cursed. “Where’d you find it?”

“South end, boss. In a shallow draw.”

Montgomery squeezed his forehead, cursing again. He
spoke in Spanish to Rosita. The cook nodded, wiped her eyes
with her skirt, and left for the back of the house.

“Wait here, Joe, and then—”

“So this is how you turn me down, Lent?” A city gentleman
in a well-cut black suit and city shoes walked with importance
through the hallway door and into the foyer. He looked down
at the floor. His face went white.

“Sorry about this,” Montgomery tried to explain. “Joe here
found a baby. All this blood . . . a dang mess.”

The city man looked at Joe Spain. Looked back at the baby.

“Well, curious . . . a colored baby.” Thus, the man spoke
what they all had observed but hadn’t mentioned. He gestured
to Spain, turned to Montgomery. “You don’t mind me asking,
Montgomery: is this cowboy ours?”

Montgomery frowned. “Ours? With all respect, Senator, you
haven’t bought the ranch yet.”

“Of course. I’m trying to get an understanding. So I’m
asking—is this cowboy part of the ranch?”

Lent Montgomery squared his back, peered at the man.
“What difference does it make who he is? He works for me and
he found a baby on my property. I’ll take care of it from here.”

But the city man wouldn’t back down. “A colored boy finds
a colored baby. Dead. And that doesn’t seem strange to you? I
know this is still your property, Montgomery. But the Douglas
County sheriff is going to find this very strange.”

Montgomery pulled to his full height. “What’s strange is
you standing in my house questioning how I handle my business! And you want to buy a ranch? You don’t know a rat’s tail
about what it means to own a ranch. Or keep loyal ranch hands.
In fact, you can get your—”

“You threatening me, Montgomery?”

Lent Montgomery stepped over the baby. “Get out of my
house, Grimes. And get that big, ugly car off my property!”
The city man turned up his collar and pushed through the
open doorway. He looked over his shoulder. “I’ll be back to
finish the contracts.”

Montgomery slammed the big front door. But all in the house could hear the car spin on gravel and ice, then squeal
onto the ranch road leading back to Denver.

Spain looked to his boss, knowing what he must be thinking. It was curious that Joe Spain, a colored cowboy, had found
on his property a little colored baby. Dead.

But Lent Montgomery didn’t mention it.

In fact, that morning was the last Joe Spain would ever see
of his boss. Or Rosita. Or the city man. Or anybody else.
Because by morning the next day, Joe Spain, too, was dead.

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