Rides a Stranger by David Bell Page A

extra day. I thought of work and my life back at the university. I was already behind and overwhelmed. Did I need to spend more time on what very well may be a wild goose chase?
    But I couldn’t stop. I looked at those boxes of books … the potential that something belonging to and created by my father … I couldn’t turn away.
    I started opening boxes and looking. I looked until my back hurt, and I had to stand up and stretch. I discovered a few things: A lot of people acquired and then disposed of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. A lot of families apparently didn’t hold onto the potty training books they bought for their children. And a lot of people read mystery and romance novels. Loads and loads of them.
    Patti came by once to check on me. I told her I didn’t know how much longer I would keep looking, and she again told me that was just fine with her.
    “I wish I could get one of our employees to help you, but we’re short staffed.”
    “That’s fine.”
    “Our business is up with the economy being so bad. More and more people shop here for their clothes and furniture.”
    “I hope they buy some books, too,” I said.
    “They do. Books and CDs and DVDs. We sell it all. People like to be entertained when times are bad.”
    “That makes sense,” I said.
    “Well,” she said, “I’ll let you keep at it.”
    I did. For another hour after she left my side. When I first saw the box with my mother’s handwriting on the side, I almost went right past it. In a thick black marker, she had scrawled “Old Books.” My mother used a distinctive “d.” She always added a looping swirl to the end, her own personal version of a serif font.
    I pulled that box close to me and opened it. My father’s books. The big-dick books, mostly spy novels. Robert Ludlum. Ken Follett. Frederick Forsyth. Eric Ambler. I went on to the next box with my Mom’s writing on it. Same thing. Dad’s books, but not Dad’s book. I opened two more with the same results. I wanted to take them all. I wanted to tell Patti that they all belonged to me, and I was going to haul them away whether she wanted me to or not. I had no idea what I would do with them. I really didn’t want to read them. I just wanted to have them. I wanted them in my possession instead of someone else’s.
    And then I found the smaller box, also with Mom’s handwriting on it.
    The box was sealed with several layers of packing tape. The box looked old, worn, and a little beaten, like it had been shipped and moved around more than once without being opened. I couldn’t get the tape off of it. I had to use a key to dig into and slice open the thick tape. It required a lot of effort. I sliced and dug and pulled until the lid came open.
    The top of the box was stuffed with bubble wrap. I pulled that off. Then there was a layer of thin cardboard. I tossed that aside.
    And then I saw it. The cover showed a rugged cowboy on his horse. They stood on a ridge that overlooked a small western town. The cowboy packed a revolver on his hip, and the stock of a rifle protruded from a scabbard on his horse. The cowboy looked lean and tan and strong. He squinted into the distance, toward the town. He looked capable and alone.
    Across the top in thick, Western-style lettering, it said: Rides a Stranger a novel by Herbert Henry. I lifted up the copies on top. There were more below. Many more. I guessed the box held about twenty of them in clean, crackling new shape despite their age. They were well preserved and perfect. If what the book collectors and Detective Hyland told me was true, I was staring at a twenty thousand dollar box of books.
    I had found them.
    I picked up one of them, gently, like I was handling a bird’s egg. I paged to the back and looked for an author bio. There was a small one. It simply said, “Herbert Henry is an author who lives in the Midwest. This is his first novel.”
    I went back to the front and found the dedication, the one that had caused so much