by Bart Paul
After I brushed the sorrel, I eased Dad’s rig up on him. Sarah walked out of the saddle room looking calm and pretty and handed me a hackamore. She was wearing a new pair of armitas over her jeans with long fringe almost to her boots. She wore what looked like my dad’s teamroping trophy buckle under them.
“Pretty armitas.”
“Wedding present,” she said. “Elkhide. From my … from Kip.”
“Make ’em himself?”
She gave a little snort. She saw me looking at the buckle.
“You mind?” she said.
I just shook my head.
“It reminds me of him,” she said. “You’re not the only one who misses Leland.”
She tightened her cinches and tied on the cantlebag with the tagging gear. I gypped the gelding around a bit more before I got on. I never would have done that when I was eighteen.
“Not the Tommy Smith I remember,” she said.
“Yeah, well.”
“Does the new wound still bother you?”
“Hardly notice it.”
“I bet,” she said.
We rode out east past the corrals, through the horse pasture, and up a long slope into a field where willow grew tall along a big ditch and where a new mama cow could get off by herself to calve.
“Dad had most of them tagged already,” she said. “They’ve been calved out for a week or so, but the last ones slipped by me.”
“Those gym rats in the shed didn’t help you?”
“What do you think?” she said. “They’re friends of Kip’s from Silver Springs or some place. Not exactly ranch-raised, but at least they don’t appear to be tweakers. Kip said they could help with maintenance around the place once they settle in.”
“So, where is old Kip today?”
“In Carson,” she said. “He has a meeting up at a legislator’s office, probably followed by drinks, dinner, that whole thing. He’s trying to get support for an Eastern Sierra veterans’ jobs program.”
“Can’t argue with that. He’s real go-getter, I hear.”
We circled through the stock. Sarah was quiet, watching the cattle like she was afraid to talk. These were first-calf heifers, and they kept them close in to keep an eye on them. Dave’s older range cows were mostly out on his winter permit in the Nevada desert thirty miles north, experienced old girls who could get by in hard country. We were just riding along keeping to our own thoughts, and I shook out my loop and swung it to remind the sorrel what-was-what. I was figuring it would’ve been about time for Dave to gather the pairs off that permit, but to me, that was all untraveled country.
“You’re right,” Sarah said. She’d been quiet for a long time. “Kip says he likes to lead by example.”
I didn’t even remember what we’d been talking about.
“So what about you?” she said. “Did you get the college money you reenlisted for?”
“Not exactly.”
She looked like that was what she expected me to say.
“I still have some medical stuff to clear up.”
“The limp,” she said.
“That’s part of it.”
“So,” she said. “Nothing, then.”
I told her I’d been looking into officer candidate school with the help of a female captain who’d gone that route. She kind of smirked at that.
“I hope that all works out for you,” she said. “Since you gave up so much for it.”
We picked up half a dozen pair and eased them toward a wire trap where one rider could hold them while the other roped. Some steers grazing just over the fence raised their heads to watch us. Sarah told me to build a loop and get to it. It felt so good I was excited and rushed it. My toss was pathetic, and my arm felt like a dishrag. Even the sorrel was disgusted and skittered off to the left when the loop landed in the grass.
“Definitely not the Tommy Smith I remember,” she said.
Now I took my time thinking about what I was doing and eased up to a little bull calf, then stopped thinking entirely and threw all relaxed, like I’d been at it all afternoon. I got both hind feet at the hocks and dallied and was feeling pretty brash until Sarah stepped off her horse and hustled down my rope. Then I felt like a prize chump. I watched her grabbing the calf’s foreleg and flank, jerking it off its feet then laying it down easy with a knee on its neck as I kept the rope tight. I got off, backed the sorrel a step and rooted around in her cantlebag for the applicator and tags. I wrote the cow’s ear-tag number on a blank yellow tag and clipped that in the calf’s ear. The tagger itself was new and worked so slick and easy I thought I must be doing it wrong. I was keeping Sarah waiting longer than I should have, and I thought she’d be peeved when the sorrel stepped forward and put some slack in the rope. But all she did was have some sport with how rusty I was. When I was done, Sarah let the calf up and it ran back to its mother.
“Next time, you rope and I’ll flank. Don’t know what I was thinking.”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m perfectly capable of tagging by myself if I have to.”
“But you’re not by yourself.”
She got back on her horse.
“What are the green tags for? You and Kip get your own brand?”
“Boy, nothing gets by you,” she said.
I started to ease another pair away from the fence, watching to see if she was going to take her rope down.
“I’m not handling this very well,” she said.
“It’s okay. You been through hell the last few days.”
“I mean the ‘seeing you again’ part,” she said.
Then she gave me a what-the-hell look and we got back to it, both of us kidding each other now and then, more skittish than the way we used to, but not so bad either. We’d finished with the calf of a green-tagged heifer when Sarah looked up west. The two ironpumpers were bouncing out our way, all ballcaps and muscle shirts, sitting two gentle horses at a lope like a couple of sacks of walnuts. Sarah sort of tensed up and started shaking out a loop to catch the last untagged calf in the trap. The two gunsels kept coming, and some of the heifers scattered along the fence. I edged the sorrel crossways to slow them and Sarah made her throw. She got one hind foot, and I got off. The two were right with us now. I handed my mecate to the tall guy sitting a dun mare and smiled nice as you please so he’d hold the sorrel and stay out of our way, then I trotted down Sarah’s rope and flanked the calf. Sarah was all business as she got down and clipped that tag on. When we were done, we stepped aboard and I thanked the guy for holding my horse.
“Anything else Delroy and me can do for you, sir?” he said.
Sarah got a cranky look but didn’t say anything.
“Sarah and I are going to ride down this ditch a ways to make sure no calf got left behind in the willows. You boys might want to check the cattle in this next field. They should be starting to calve out right about now.”
“We’d be glad to … Sergeant,” the little one called Delroy said.
I kind of frowned at that. We watched those honyockers ride up to the gate, get off and walk through, then get back on and bounce away.
“When do you think they’ll figure out that there are no calves to be had out of those corrientes?” Sarah said. Her father had summer-pastured Mexican steers for a Reno stock contractor as long as I could remember.
“Not till we’re back on your porch getting outside of a couple more beers.”
“I blocked out what a smart-ass you are,” she said.
We hit a high trot across the pasture back toward the corrals, and I asked her how they knew who I was.
“Kip probably told them you’d be here,” she said.
“How did Kip know?”
“I told him you were visiting,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I?”
I’d had the feeling maybe she hadn’t told the new husband I was coming back to that country, or at least that she hadn’t asked me to come. Maybe that was just my wishful thinking.
“Those two always seem like
they’re checking up on me,” she said. The afternoon wind picked up and spun the dust over the Hoffstatler ranch. “Sometimes I feel like a stranger on my own place.”
We braced ourselves as a wave of dust hit us, turning our faces from the wind.
“I suppose you heard Dad was thinking of selling our water rights,” she said.
“You going to?”
“That’s his decision, not mine,” she said. “But everyone’s got an opinion. Some folks said with this drought Dad better sell them quick while they’re still worth a bundle.” She squinted like the dust hurt her eyes. “You know I have to believe he’s coming back. If I don’t have that to hang on to, I’ll just go crazy.”
“I know, babe.”
“Don’t call me that,” she said.
“So, is that why you wanted me here—beside the fact I scare people?”
“In a way, yeah,” she said. “Moral support. Even if they don’t say it to my face, everyone thinks he’s dead. You’re the only person I know contrary enough to think maybe he’s not. I hope so, anyway.”
A bigger gust hit us, and we hunkered down inside our hats and collars.
“The water rights thing was Kip’s idea at first,” she said when the wind died. “He said Dad could finance a whole new future for me—after Dad was gone. Kip was talking an equine event center, covered arenas, clinics, and all that PR stuff that he’s so good at. Dad’s not as hidebound as he lets on, so he was intrigued. This is a small place. Even with the permits it’s never been easy to make it go. Just as hard in my granddad’s day. You know that. Dad thought Kip’s idea might give us a better life than just a cow-calf outfit scraping by. I’d be free to quit the sheriff’s office—maybe have kids.”
She was looking straight ahead so it was hard to read what she was thinking.
“Dad was real high on me marrying Kip,” she said. “You need to know that.”
“Look, Sarah, all this is none of my business. But you know my dad had more respect for Dave than just about any cowman he knew, and that was saying a lot, so don’t get pissed off. I guess I wonder if the best legacy for you and any kids you might have wouldn’t be to hang on to those rights. Keep this a working ranch.”
“Well,” she said, “if I had a different husband, that would surely be the case.” She goosed her horse and left me in the dust.
Chapter Three
We rode into the yard holding on to our hats in the stiff gusts. Sarah pulled the mare up as we rounded the horse corral. A second county SUV was parked in the shade facing hers. Mitch Mendenhall, the Frémont County sheriff, was sitting with a deputy inside the SUV out of the wind, talking on his radio. He’d been sheriff since I was in high school.
“I’ve seen about enough of him the past couple of days,” Sarah said. “Since Monday he treats me like a civilian.”
Mitch was parked at the base of the buzzards’ cottonwood. Sarah rode over to the barn and stepped down from her horse, and I followed. I watched Mitch and the deputy get out while I pulled off my saddle and blankets. The wind seemed to piss Mitch off. Watching the deputy walk up to me and give me a two-handed handshake just pissed him off more. The deputy was Jack Harney. He was a Piute team-roping pal of both Dave and my dad and the chief investigator for the sheriff’s office.
“Hey there, Trouble,” Jack said. “Heard you was back.”
“So, Sarah,” Mitch said. Then he said it again louder.
That just made Jack laugh.
Sarah came out of the barn after hanging her bridle up. She stopped on the dirt ramp leading into the barn alley and stood there watching Mitch.
“Kip home?” he asked.
Sarah shook her head no. “In Carson,” she said.
Mitch ignored Jack and me when he talked to her. “His phone doesn’t answer.”
She looked west at the sun. “By now he’s probably having drinks and dinner at Adele’s,” she said. “Schmoozing that state senator he knows. He doesn’t take calls in restaurants.”
“He’s a class act.” Mitch finally looked over at me. “She said you’d show up.”
“And a damn cheery howdy to you, too—Sheriff.”
He stood there staring at me for a minute, kind of huffing. He had a bunch of papers in a file folder and looked down at them.
“Hey, Sarah, can you give this stuff back to Kip then?” he said. He held the file out to her. “It’s the cell-phone tracking the Feds did for me.”
He was still talking when Sarah slapped both hands over the file and yanked it away.
“He’s my father,” she said. “I just might be the one to see if …”
You couldn’t make out the rest of what she said. She walked across the yard to the doublewide and climbed the steps, her spurs ringing. The cheap doors and door frames of mobile homes are so light that they don’t slam hard, but Sarah did her best.
“This has been real hard on her,” Mitch said.
“No shit, Mitch.”
“Don’t you come back here with that chip on your shoulder,” he said. “I’m not cleaning up another one of your messes like when Lester got shot.”
“Go to hell.”
I’d said it as nice as could be. I even smiled. Jack and I walked across the yard to the barn, and I unsaddled Sarah’s mare, then he and I led the horses into to the corral and turned them loose. I crossed the corral and opened the far gate to let all the saddle horses out into the pasture for the night. We walked back toward the barn and waited for Mitch to back his SUV away from the trees. He stopped hard next to us. We let the dust spin over us as Mitch rolled down his window. Jack gave me a grin and got in the passenger side.
“Look,” Mitch said. “You and me got to be on the same page on this deal. For Sarah’s sake.”
I didn’t say a word, but I must have nodded. There were already big black and white glops of buzzard shit on the hood of his department vehicle. It was hard to believe this guy won countywide elections three terms in a row.
“But just remember,” he said, “there’s a spotlight on us here. One wrong move, and we all look like chumps.” He backed away from me then put it in gear, heading for the lane. He drove fast enough to disappear in his own dust.
I walked up the steps of the doublewide and knocked. Sarah had slammed the door so hard it bounced back open, but I didn’t want to just walk in on her in her new place. I really didn’t want to go in at all. She didn’t answer the second knock, so I went in anyway. She was sitting on a stool at a counter that separated the kitchen from the living room, and she could see out the window to the barn where Jack, Mitch, and I’d been talking. The light from a small lamp was shining on her face.
“Don’t mind Mitch,” she said. “He knew you were coming. He just got grumpy when I told him I wanted you around.”
“I thought old Kip got those ironpumpers for that.”
“They’re a joke,” she said. “But the husband’s impulse was duly noted.” She got me a beer, then sat back on the stool.
I looked around for some sign of her in the living room.
“I know,” she said. “It has all the charm of the lobby of a Days Inn. We’re working on it, but we haven’t been here long.”
“I didn’t say a thing.”
“You didn’t have to,” she said.
There were pictures on the wall, but mostly of Kip, and mostly signed by somebody famous. The only picture of Sarah was from her wedding, taken under some trees by herself, and she looked so beautiful and so happy I didn’t linger on it. I looked at a picture of Kip in a big Nevada hat, wild rag, Confederate cavalry goatee and mustaches, grinning like crazy standing next to Buck Brannaman at a horse gentling clinic. Another picture was of him with Sam Elliott on a movie set. There was one of him in a Hawaiian shirt and ballcap, holding a surfboard with some TV star. And a picture of him with Delroy, the gunsel with the hotdog goatee, both leaning on the open passenger door of a small plane. And finally, a photograph of him in a suit with the new Nevada governor. A wooden plaque
with a gold-colored horse trailer on it said good things about the Tule Lake Trailer Company from the Fresno Chamber of Commerce.
“It’s like you’re married to half a dozen different guys.”
Sarah gave me a look. She switched off the lamp and swiveled on the stool to face me.
“They told me there are a few basic ways they’ll be looking at Dad’s case,” she said, “so I want to bring you up to speed.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“FBI. Mitch too,” she said. “First is kidnapping for ransom, but it’s been days now, and there’s no demand yet.” You could see she was trying to keep the deputy part of her in control.
“If we get a demand,” she said, “we’ll focus on that tack, demand proof of life, negotiate payment or whatever.”
“Okay.”
“The second possibility is he was taken by someone. With intent to do harm—” She made a little choking sound. “And he’s already dead.” She squared herself, a deputy again. “That, of course, is a totally different scenario.”
“Yeah.”
“Third is that he somehow wandered off. They say most adult missing persons are due to dementia—the wandering off thing—or substance abuse or schizophrenia. So we can rule those out. But maybe he had a stroke or another heart attack, loss of blood to the brain. Who knows? He’s stronger than he looked and might have been able to really cover some ground.”
“That makes sense.”
“If he fell or passed out,” she said, “animals might …”
I thought about the buzzards in the cottonwood, but I didn’t say anything. Besides, Sarah knew how easy it was to spot carrion in this country.
“Anyway,” she said, “we’d know. We-would-know.”
“Since there’s no word yet from kidnappers or critters, what do you think of your ‘doing harm’ idea?”
“I try not to think of it at all,” she said. “It’s too grim.”
“Anything in that financial stuff that applies?”
“No. Dad was frugal. I always knew that. That’s about it.”
“What about the water rights?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
“Could the money from that deal factor in to his disappearance?”