Winter Moon. By: Dean R. Koontz

were the most fertile in the world, producing eighty percent of the

entire country’s fresh vegetables and melons, half its fresh fruit and

almonds, and much more.

They stopped at a roadside produce stand and bought a one-pound bag of

roasted almonds for a quarter of what the cost would have been in a

supermarket. Jack stood beside the Explorer, eating a handful of nuts,

staring at vistas of productive fields and orchards. The day was

blessedly quiet, and the air was clean. ..- Residing in the city, it

was easy to forget there were other ways to live, worlds beyond the

teeming streets of the human hive. He was a sleeper waking to a real

world more diverse and interesting than the dream he had mistaken for

reality. In pursuit of their new life, they reached Reno that night,

Salt Lake City the next, and Eagle’s Roost, Montana, at three o’clock

in the afternoon on the sixth of .. November.

To Kill a Mockingbird was one of Jack’s favorite novels, and Atticus

Finch, the courageous lawyer of that book, would have been at home in

Paul Youngblood’s office on the top floor of the only three-story

building in Eagle’s Roost. The wooden blinds surely dated from

mid-century. The mahogany wainscoting, bookshelves, and cabinets were

glass-smooth from decades of hand polishing. The room had an air of

gentility, a learned quietude, and the shelves held volumes of history

and philosophy as well as lawbooks.

The attorney actually greeted them with, “Howdy, neighbors! What a

pleasure this is, a genuine pleasure.” He had a firm handshake and a

smile like soft sunshine on mountain crags.

Paul Youngblood would never have been recognized as a lawyer in L.A. and

he might have been removed discreetly but forcefully if he had ever

visited the swanky offices of the powerhouse firms quartered in Century

City. He was fifty, tall, lanky, with closecropped iron-gray hair.

His face was creased and ruddy from years spent outdoors, and his big,

leathery hands were scarred by physical labor. He wore scuffed boots,

tan jeans, a white shirt, and a bolo tie with a silver clasp in the

form of a bucking bronco.

In L.A. people in similar outfits were dentists or accountants or

executives, costumed for an evening at a Country-Western bar, and could

not disguise their true nature. But Youngblood looked as if he had

been born in Western garb, birthed between a cactus and a campfire, and

raised on horseback.

Although he appeared to be rough enough to walk into a biker bar and

take on a mob of machine wranglers, the attorney was soft-spoken and so

polite that Jack was aware of how badly his own manners had

deteriorated under the constant abrasion of daily life in the city.

Youngblood won Toby’s heart by calling him

“Scout” and offering to

teach him horseback riding “come spring, starting with a pony, of

course . . . and assuming that’s okay with your folks.”

When the lawyer put on a suede jacket and a cowboy hat before leading

them out to Quartermass Ranch, Toby regarded him with wide-eyed awe.

They followed Youngblood’s white Bronco across sixteen miles of country

more beautiful than it had appeared to be in photographs. Two stone

columns, surmounted by a weathered wooden arch, marked the entrance to

their property. Burned into the arch, rustic lettering spelled

QUARTERMASS RANCH. They turned off the county route, under the sign,

and headed uphill.

Wow! This all belongs to us?” Toby asked from the back seat,

enraptured by the sprawl of fields and forests. Before either Jack or

Heather could answer him, he posed the question that he no doubt had

been wanting to ask for weeks: “Can I have a dog?”

“Just a dog?” Jack asked. “Huh?”

“With this much land, you could have a pet cow.” Toby laughed. “Cows

aren’t pets.”

“You’re wrong,” Jack said, striving for a serious tone. “They’re

darned good pets.”

“Cows!” Toby said incredulously. “No, really. You can teach a cow to

fetch, roll over, beg for its dinner, shake hands, all the usual dog

stuff– plus they make milk for your breakfast cereal.”

“You’re putting me on. Mom, is he serious?”