I pushed open the heavy wooden door of Durango Falls’ library and stepped into the still, hushed space. Other than my sculpting studio, this was without a doubt my favorite place. I came here almost every day. I think I loved the smell of old books mixed with pine floor cleaner and the lovely echo inside mostly empty, large stone buildings.

At this time of day there was usually no one around. I heard the water cooler gurgle in the left-hand corner of the room, and the lazy whirling sound the machinery inside the old heaters made. I shook the snow off my cap, peeled my thick gloves off, and stuffed them into my coat pockets. Swiping my white cane in smooth arcs in front of me, I took the twelve steps to the front desk.

Hannah Heinberger was usually on duty on Wednesday afternoons, but from her perfume, sage and roses, I knew that Elaine was manning the desk today. They must have swapped shifts.

“Hey, Elaine,” I greeted as I reached her.

“Ooo … just the person I wanted to see,” she said.

I could tell immediately that she was bursting with some piece of juicy gossip. It was funny how Elaine could always find salacious rumors in a town with a population of less than a thousand. Notorious gossip or not, she had a heart of gold and I could not remember a time when we were not best friends.

I laid my left hand at the edge of the counter. Whatever the news was it had Elaine all fired up. She was almost bubbling over with excitement.

“What is it?” I asked curiously.

She leaned forward, disturbing the air. Her breath, she’s been eating peanut butter cookies, was warm on my cold cheeks. “You’ll never guess who came in here this morning,” she cried triumphantly.

I kept my face straight. “Beyonce?”

“Fine. I just won’t tell you, and you’ll just miss the juiciest piece of information this town has heard in twenty years,” she huffed, irritated that I had spoilt her surprise. I mean, who could she come up with better than Beyonce?

I grinned evilly. “Fine. I’m sure I’ll hear from Emma Jean.”

“I haven’t told her yet,” she said with great satisfaction.

“Elaine Crockett, I might miss the juiciest piece of information this town has heard in twenty years if you don’t tell me, but you’re going to burst if you don’t spill the beans.”

“Kit Carson,” she blurted out instantly.

“Kit Carson,” I echoed, surprised. Well, well, this time she did have a juicy bit between her teeth.

Every small town had a loner, a mysterious, gruff, elusive, anti-social person who refused to be part of the community. Kit Carson was this town’s ghost. He lived on a large track of wooded land that he had converted into some kind of wolf sanctuary. Occasionally, he would drive into town in his pickup truck, but he wouldn’t make eye-contact or speak to anyone other than to grunt.

I heard he was a hulk: six feet seven inches tall and as solid as a brick house, but that he walked with a slight limp and had a scarred face that nobody actually got a good look at.

Funny thing about Kit Carson was he’d turned the tables on our tiny town. We didn’t take kindly to outside folk. You could live within our midst for fifty years and still be considered an outsider. Kit Carson was not born and raised local, and coming on his own like that without knowing a soul in our town, he was just plain asking for trouble.

He came to Durango Falls when I was about seventeen years old, and I would be twenty-two in July. So he’d been around for five years now, and even though our men folk have tried to extend the hand of friendship to him, he outright refused to have anything to do with us except for the commercial kind.

Two years ago Casey Goodnight said she saw dog tags peep out of his shirt while he was paying for steel cables at the hardware store. Yes sir, that sure gave the whole town something to gossip about. Coffee mornings weren’t the same for weeks after.

With falsely sweet voices the good town folk picked apart the man’s “secret”. Obviously, he had been dishonorably discharged from the army, and it was pure shame that made him avoid contact with the rest of humanity and turn his back on God. Yes, that’s right, Kit Carson had never seen the inside of our Church. Naturally, he had no wife because what God fearing woman would want such a heathen?

Although, with time that last piece of gossip morphed to – he murdered her. People said they heard the wolves howling on full moon nights while they were passing at the edge of his land. The stories about him got weirder and weirder. Some of them were downright crazy. Serial killer stuff. I guess we had some very bored folk in our town and they made up their own entertainment.

“Yup,” Elaine said in the same voice she employed to report scandals, “the man strode in here this morning bigger than a tree, stuck up a piece of paper on the Job’s Board, and left. Not a word to anyone.”

“Wow,” I whispered. “What’s he looking for?” I thought she would say foreman, or housekeeper.

She took a deep breath.

“What?” I prompted, inexplicably intrigued by the mystery of it all.

“You ready for this?”