by Forsaken
“Tony is still refusing to invest,” Alex said as if to explain the latest disagreement.
Clete finished saddling the last horse. He was relieved now that he knew what was going on. Even this hike back into the mountains made more sense now—and he’d only have to put up with them for another day and a half. Alex had said they would be meeting a friend in Yellowstone Park and not making the trip back, which was fine with Clete. He could make better time without them.
He began to relax a little, determined to enjoy the mountains and ignore their squabbling since all it involved was money.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
NETTIE AWAKENED TO an empty bed, but J.D. had left a note that he was expected at the ranch early this morning.
For a long time, she lay staring up at the ceiling, waiting on the inevitable guilt to assault her. To her surprise, she felt none. She was headed for sixty, legally divorced and on her own. If she wanted to go dancing with a charming man and bring him home to her bed, she darned sure could.
But J.D. wasn’t Frank.
That thought irritated her. She threw the covers off and went in to turn on the shower. Stepping under the hot spray, she realized how good she felt. Alive. J.D. had made her feel desirable again. She’d kept her figure and aged well, even if she said so herself.
This morning, feeling good about herself, she fixed her hair after her shower and took a little more time picking out what to wear. Her step was even lighter as she walked down to open the store. The sun was shining, and the spring air smelled better than she remembered it.
“You’re in a good mood this morning.”
Nettie spun around to find Sheriff Frank Curry standing in the trees next to the back door of the store. She realized he’d been waiting on her. She wondered how long.
“It’s a beautiful morning. Why wouldn’t I feel good?” she said even though she couldn’t help feeling a little rattled to see him.
He made a grumpy sound as she unlocked the store and stepped in after her.
“It’s too early in the morning for your usual, isn’t it?” she asked as she turned on the lights.
“I thought you’d have coffee going.” He glanced at his watch. “Opening the store a little late this morning, aren’t you?”
She felt her spine stiffen. “I slept in. I can do that if I want to, you know.”
“You can do whatever you want.”
She realized he was angry with her and knew he must have seen J.D. leaving her house this morning. Well, so what? He had no right to be angry. She was the one who had reason to be mad at him, not the other way around.
“Yes, you made it perfectly clear that you weren’t interested in whatever I did.” They stood glaring at each other until she broke the tense silence. “What are you really doing here, Frank Curry?”
He swallowed, pulled off his Stetson and stared at his boots for a moment. “I had to see you. I...” He raised his gaze and seemed to take her in. “You look so pretty this morning.”
She didn’t want to be touched by his words. “Thank you. But I’m sure that isn’t why you were waiting for me.”
“I just wanted to apologize for being so rude at the hospital. I have my reasons why I can’t...”
“Can’t what, Frank?”
“Why I shouldn’t be here.” He put his hat back on and started to turn toward the door.
“Frank?” She hadn’t known what she wanted to say, just that she didn’t want him to leave.
“I have to go, Lynette.” His gaze softened, and she saw a sadness in his eyes that threatened to break her heart all over again. “Take care of yourself.” With that, he was gone.
* * *
AS THE MORNING sun rose up over the mountains, Jamison reined in his horse on the high ridge overlooking the grazing sheep and put in a call to the sheriff’s office.
The dispatcher put him right through, saying the undersheriff had been waiting for his call.
“I’m glad you called,” Dillon said when he came on the line. “We have the preliminary results on the blood found on Dewey Putman’s clothing. It wasn’t human.”
Jamison glanced over at Maddie on the horse next to him, knowing how relieved she would be to hear that. “Has he been able to tell you any more about what might have happened up here?”
“No, he’s pretty much stuck to the story he told you.”
“We still haven’t found the sheepherder. There are a few things missing from the sheep camp, food and an ax. Also, someone took the batteries out of the two-way radio.”
The line began breaking up. “I think I’m going to lose you,” Dillon said. “You need to know that we got a call late last night. A rancher down by Gardiner found a horse in his barn. The horse has the Diamond C brand on it. Do you know what the sheepherder was riding?”
“Let me ask.” He covered the phone and looked again at Maddie. She’d been watching him intently the whole time he’d been on the phone. “Describe the horse Branch was riding.”
She did and he repeated the information to the undersheriff.
“That’s it, then,” Dillon said. “Apparently Dewey wasn’t the only one to abandon camp. I suppose you can wind it up and come on back down.”
“Yeah, thanks.” As he disconnected, he felt Maddie staring at him as if she’d been holding her breath. “Dewey’s coat had only lamb’s blood on it.”
She nodded as if that didn’t surprise her. “So where did they find Branch’s horse?” she asked, having no doubt connected the dots.
“Down by Gardiner.”
She was already shaking her head. “I don’t know what his horse is doing near Gardiner, but Branch Murdock did not ride it down there. He wouldn’t have just left without a word.”
“Maddie...”
She said something under her breath he didn’t catch. “Why didn’t you tell the undersheriff that someone else has been through camp? From the size of the footprints, you said the person wearing the hiking boots was probably male and was limping. He must have been looking for a way out of the mountains. Perhaps on a horse? That would explain how the horse ended up near Gardiner. It would also explain the missing food. The person could have taken the radio batteries so no one could get word out about the stolen horse.”
“That’s one theory,” he agreed. “But where was Branch all this time?”
She raised a brow. “Let’s not forget, the ax is missing. Because if someone tried to take Branch’s horse...he would have done his best to stop them.”
He didn’t want to point out that they still hadn’t found his body or a fresh grave in the area around camp. But Jamison had plenty of unanswered questions himself. “Okay. What do you want to do?”
“You said you found his horse’s tracks.... I want to see where they go.”
“We already know where they go. Gardiner.”
She shook her head. “I want to see for myself.”
“Fine.”
“But we’ll have to hurry,” she added. “There’s a storm coming in.”
Jamison looked at the clear, blue sky overhead and the few puffy clouds on the horizon to the west, wondering where she had gotten that idea.
* * *
FRANK MENTALLY KICKED himself all the way back to his office. He shouldn’t have gone to see Lynette. But his need to see her had outweighed his fear of his ex and what she might do.
Foolish, very foolish. If Pam had any idea how he still felt about Lynette...
“I thought you were still on vacation,” Undersheriff Dillon Lawson said when he saw Frank. “By the way, you look like hell. Couldn’t you sleep at the hospital?”
“I checked myself out after you left.”
“I thought you were supposed to stay in the hospital another day?”
Frank made a face as he sat down behind his desk, determined to go to work to take his mind off everything. “So have you heard any more from Deputy Jamison?”
“Just talked to him. I told him about the blood tests on Dewey Putman’s c
lothing and Branch Murdock’s horse being found down by Gardiner. He didn’t say when he’d be coming out of the Beartooths, but he sounded relieved. He’s probably anxious to get away from Maddie.”
Frank chuckled. He remembered being called down to the Grand Hotel one night. There’d been an altercation in the bar. Some rancher had gotten into a heated argument with Maddie, suggesting she had no idea how to run a sheep ranch by herself.
Maddie had thrown her beer in the man’s face. The rancher’s wife had jumped in, and when Frank arrived, Maddie had the woman down on the floor.
“Maddie can definitely hold her own,” he said. “Still, I’m sorry about Branch running out on her. I sure didn’t see that coming. I wonder if she can keep the ranch going after this.” He shook his head and saw something in his undersheriff’s expression. “What’s wrong? It’s Pam, isn’t it?”
“Remind me never to play poker with you,” Dillon said. “She was spotted in Beartooth last night. I had all area law enforcement keeping an eye out for her. A game warden saw her drive through town. She was in one of the judge’s old ranch pickups. I think it’s time to warn Nettie.”
* * *
AS JAMISON AND MADDIE dropped over another ridge, he lost the sound of the sheep. She had gotten the dog to stay behind. When they’d left, Lucy was lying in the sun, watching the sheep.
He reined in for a moment to scan the landscape. From this high point, all he could see were miles and miles of snowcapped peaks, new green meadows and pine-choked ravines. It felt like flying to be this high in such a place.
The air felt intoxicating. Or maybe it was being here, seeing this with Maddie. Like him, she had stopped, and he could see her breathing it all in as if needing it for her soul.
Out of the wind and away from the flock, he was able to hear the songs of meadowlarks and the babble of the many small creeks fed by the melting snow. Pockets of snow still melted slowly on the north sides of the mountains and in the heavy timber on the slopes.
He rode on. But this morning he wasn’t anxious to find the horseshoe tracks again. He could understand why Maddie needed proof. He just hated to think how she would take it if, given all the evidence, Branch Murdock had apparently abandoned not only his flock—but her, as well.
He found the horseshoe tracks that matched the ones he’d seen at the camp. The tracks followed a game trail along the bottom of a rock cliff but soon petered out in the rocks. Jamison brought his binoculars up and scanned the country ahead. It was miles of wilderness to where Branch’s horse had been left.
“Down there,” Maddie said, spotting the tracks again.
They rode off the ridge, across another wide bowl and up another slope to a breathtaking ridge. Each time, they lost the tracks but found them again.
As he reined in on yet another ridge, he wondered how far they would have to go before Maddie accepted that Branch had ridden out of here. Why he’d left his dog, Jamison had no idea. But he had. His coat and the rope around Lucy’s neck attested to that.
As for whoever had visited the camp, the man’s tracks had been on top of Branch’s and Dewey’s, suggesting he’d come by after they’d both left.
“If you kept going in this direction, where would you come out?” he asked.
She shot him a look to see if he was seriously asking this. “We both know the answer to that. Gardiner, the north entrance into Yellowstone Park. But we are still miles from there.”
“Where is the closest hiking trail?” he asked as he scanned the land ahead with his binoculars.
“None are close,” she said, sounding distracted.
“The assumed hiker who came into camp must have been lost and stumbled onto the sheep camp, then.”
“That’s one theory,” she said, echoing his earlier words.
When he lowered the binoculars, he saw that she was squinting into the distance. The mountain ranges seemed to go on forever—just as the horseshoe tracks did. The wind had come up again and now flattened the grasses and wore at the rock ridges—as well as at his nerves.
“May I see your binoculars?” Maddie asked.
He handed them over and watched her frown. “What is it?”
“That stone Johnny on that rise is new.”
“I beg your pardon?” he asked.
But she didn’t answer before she rode toward the rise.
Catching up, he watched her dismount and lead her horse toward a pile of rocks on a high point at the edge of the rise. The rocks had been stacked up to make a pillar a couple feet wide and about four feet high.
“Are you seeing this?” she asked.
“It’s a stack of rocks, though I can’t imagine how they got like that.” Nature worked in unusual ways, but these were stacked too neatly, he thought, to be natural phenomena.
“They go by a lot of names. Cairns, rock Johnnies, sheepherder monuments,” she said over her shoulder.
“You’re saying someone purposely built this?” he asked, joining her. “Why?”
“Most are old trail markers, grazing pasture boundaries, landmarks. The Native Americans used them to let those who followed know where to find water. Sheepherders often built them to pass the time or make a windbreak for warmth. They come in handy on a foggy day. No two are alike so you can tell where you are.”
“You can’t think Branch made this? Not this far from camp.”
She didn’t answer as she studied the stack of rocks for a moment, leaning down to eye the flat rock balancing at the peak. “The top rock points the way.”
“To what? Water?”
She shook her head. “There are too many small creeks all along these mountain ranges for that to be why it was built here. This formation is new. Someone left it for a reason.” She swung up into the saddle again. “Let’s see where it leads.”
They rode another couple hundred yards before they found a second cairn.
“This one is new, too,” she said as they both dismounted and walked over to it.
“How can you tell that?”
“See where the lichen was recently knocked off the rock?”
He could see what she meant. The lichen had been dislodged, leaving a spot like a fresh wound on the rock—unlike all the rocks around it.
Jamison knelt by the cairn. This one was smaller, but after seeing the other one, he could tell that it had been made by the same person and recently. The structure was identical. At the base, he spied something that had blown up against the bottom rock.
“What did you find?” Maddie asked.
“Part of a hand-rolled cigarette.” Cupping his hand to protect it from the wind, he held it to his nose. “Same tobacco as what I found in Branch’s coat pocket. The boot prints are the same, too,” he said, pointing at a spot in the soft earth.
He turned to look at her. “You said Branch wouldn’t have gone this far from camp. Isn’t it possible he was leaving these to let you know he left and went this way?”
Maddie studied the stack of stones. Like the other one, this had a flat pointed stone on top. It was aimed back into the mountains where the snow looked both lower on the peaks—and deeper.
It made no sense for Branch to wander this far from the sheep unless he was headed to Gardiner, leaving the sheep and his responsibilities behind. His boot prints were in the dirt around the cairn, even part of one of his homemade cigarettes. Jamison could tell that, like him, she couldn’t deny what she was seeing. But unlike him, she wasn’t ready to accept it.
“There’s something back here he wants us to see,” she said as she turned, walked back to her horse and swung up into the saddle again.
While he couldn’t imagine what, he knew they had to follow the trail Branch had apparently left—no matter where it led them.
* * *
NETTIE TOOK OUT the garbage after opening the store. As she walked along the side of the building by the stairs to her upstairs apartment, she thought about J.D. He hadn’t returned. It made her curious how things were going with his family. He
never seemed to want to talk about it.
She opened the lid of the large trash container. As she did, she remembered seeing him stuff the pile of rags down as if wanting to hide them. It had seemed odd at the time but she’d forgotten about it—until this moment.
Standing on her tiptoes, she peered into the trash. No rags. She dumped her trash to one side, then using another plastic trash container lid, she moved aside the trash from the corner where she’d seen J.D. throw the rags.
The trash shifted to the side, and she pulled back in surprise.
It wasn’t dirty rags.
It was a pile of white bandages, and they weren’t dirty.
They were stained with blood.
* * *
JAMISON AND MADDIE followed the tracks Branch’s horse had left behind—and the cairns. Maddie knew Branch had built them, although she couldn’t imagine why.
What if she was wrong about him? Maybe he had gone “sagebrushed” and half-mad, his tender gone, and he’d stumbled back into the mountains building one stone Johnny after another for no good reason. Wasn’t it possible he just couldn’t take it anymore and after Dewey had abandoned him, he’d been mad at Maddie for hiring the boy, had headed for Gardiner?
But while her mind argued against it, she thought of Dewey and the terror in his eyes. What if he’d seen Branch going mad? Maybe hallucinating... How else could she explain the “crying” Dewey swore the two of them had heard? It could have just been coyotes, but if Branch told him it was human and crying—
Even old Branch was spooked.
“We need to backtrack,” the deputy said as he scanned the country ahead. “I’ve lost the tracks, and I don’t see any more rock piles.”
She brought her horse up next to him. They hadn’t seen another cairn for a while. The last one had looked as if it had been hurriedly stacked together. The top part had either fallen down or been knocked down.
She hadn’t realized how long they’d been at this. The wind had blown in dark cumulus clouds that accumulated on the mountain peaks, growing darker and larger as they moved toward them. This morning she’d smelled a storm coming in. She’d hoped it might go south of them. Or at least not blow in until they were finished.