by Bart Paul
“Holy shitballs, Batman,” he said. “How the hell did you do that so fast?” He looked shook.
“Talk less. Shoot more.”
He took his first shot. I must have rattled him, because I saw a puff of sand off in the sage with no sound he’d even grazed anything. We emptied our loads a second time, and he watched me kneel down and pick up one of his spent casings.
“What’re you doing?” he said.
“Comparing the nickel and the brass.”
He studied me close as I picked up one of the brass shells with just my fingers touching the ends.
“There are itty-bitty marks from the loading and ejecting, see?” I was just making stuff up. I picked up a couple more, then moved on to the nickel-plated. I couldn’t see a shit worth of difference. They looked the same to me as they did in the box. I held one up to the sun. It was all silvery, and I handled it like cut glass.
“Go ahead. Check it out for yourself.”
Kip picked up one of the nickel-plated and looked at it. Then he looked pissed. He wiped the casing with the end of his wild rag and tossed it in the sand.
“I know what you’re doing, dude,” he said. “You want my fingerprints.”
“If I wanted your fingerprints, I’d swipe something from your house. Paranoid, much?”
“Paranoid, hell,” he said. “My father-in-law disappears and two days later my wife’s old squeeze shows up and starts snooping around.”
“Dave and my dad were best friends, that’s all.”
“Everybody thinks that old bastard was a goddamn saint,” he said. “They don’t know shit.”
“Was?”
He acted like he didn’t hear me.
“You ought to keep those shells. You could start reloading and save a bundle. Economize.”
“You know what you can do with those shells, Sergeant.”
“My mom’s boyfriend is a reloader. I’ll give ’em to Burt.”
“Ah, the new Marine boyfriend,” he said. “Semper fi.”
He said it real crass. I wondered what else he knew about my family.
“Musta bollixed up your plans when Dave changed his mind about the water sale.”
“You hick, you couldn’t figure my plans in a lifetime,” he said. “All you see is what I want you to see.” He started messing with his phone. Then he looked up and laughed.
“You can stay out here all day with the trash if you want,” he said. “I gotta boogie. That county girl is waiting.” He ejected his magazine and popped in a loaded one from his bag, then holstered the SIG.
“You were right, Kip. That’s a righteously fine piece.”
He moved toward his truck without taking his eyes off me or his hand off the holster. I dropped another five rounds in the Colt just for show.
“How about you stay out of my business and stay away from my wife,” he said.
“Any problem you have with her didn’t start with me.”
“Then how about you just go to hell.”
“Hell’s empty. All you sonsabitches are up here.”
He flipped me off and got in his truck. I listened to that big Cummins rumble as he drove away. It was like we were in the seventh grade, but with better weapons.
I finished that second beer. Three certifiable crazies, and it was barely lunchtime. I watched Kip’s dust, knowing he’d have to stop at the paved road to open the gate and knowing how pissed he’d be. I picked up his spent brass and dropped them in a paper bag. Then I crawled through the barbwire into the pasture to pick up his Coors can and bag that, too. Just to be sure.
Chapter Ten
I drove into Becky’s yard and saw Dan at his computer on the porch updating spring calving records. I told him I might need to borrow his flatbed and gooseneck the next morning, and he said no problem. And I asked if I could keep the .45 a few days more. He didn’t inquire as to why, but he looked serious and asked if I was okay. I said I just had a crazy hunch about something and would need to check it out horseback. He said he’d have the trailer hooked up and the diesel topped off just in case.
I found Sarah in her county vehicle parked in front of the Indian curio shop, watching for speeders for the second time in two days. She looked bored and sad and told me she felt Mitch was punishing her for bringing me into his private sheriff’s business. I started to say I was sorry, but she wouldn’t have any of it. I told her I’d just been shooting with Kip. She took off her shades and rubbed her eyes then asked how that went.
“He showed me that weird side you told me about. Dropped the mask. Like he didn’t give a shit anymore. But he knows what he’s doing with a nine-millimeter.”
“He was a Marine,” she said.
“So he says.” I handed her the bag with the spent shell casings and the Coors can.
“What’s this?” she said.
“Kip’s fingerprints. Agent Fuchs can run ’em for us.”
“Why?” she said. “What are you up to?”
I told her about my talk with Hoyt, and with Jedediah. She wasn’t quite ready to make a connection between her husband and questions about the water sale, or her husband and bad companions. But she was getting there.
“At the least, that boy has some serious steroid problems. Let’s just check his record so we can see what we’re dealing with.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’d hate to think that you’re putting him in your sights because—”
“’Cause I’m jealous?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“Been my experience, when people drop the mask they get dangerous. They don’t give one shit anymore.”
“I’d like it better if you were just jealous,” she said.
“I’ve already dropped my mask on that one.”
“Okay,” she said. “You win. I’ll get this to Fuchs. I’ll have him run the prints.”
“And have him check Hoyt’s cell phone as soon as Hoyt gets back tonight.”
Me telling her about the texts that were supposed to be from her dad but couldn’t be just brought all the grimness back.
“You working tomorrow?”
She said she was.
“You might want to take a sick day.”
“What are you up to next?” she said.
“What you asked me to come here for, I hope.”
She nodded and reached out the open window to squeeze my arm. Then I stood back as she put on her shades and took out after a camper going forty in a twenty-five zone. I didn’t have a chance to tell her I wanted to ride up to False Spring in case Hoyt found anything interesting up there.
I parked by Dave’s corrals and caught and saddled the sorrel. It was about four in the afternoon. I rode out at a high trot to the willow field where the heifers were calving. I checked them all, some close, some off against the far fence, their calves just little ears sticking up in the late afternoon sun. The prolapsed heifer looked good. The brockle-face and her new calf were doing well. The heifer that was about to drop that morning had got herself a nice little bull calf. I jotted down her number but wasn’t going to tag it myself off such a green horse. Actually, I had other plans. I stretched in my stirrups and looked north to see if I could spot Hoyt’s truck. The sun was off to my left when a shadow crossed over and I heard the flap of vultures’ wings. Up along the willow ditch I could see a coyote eating something–probably the fresh afterbirth of the new calf. Three vultures cruised by low overhead and the coyote tucked and ran. It disappeared into the willows, then came out the other side of the ditch and disappeared a second time. I looked back and the birds had settled in on the afterbirth. Four more glided by just overhead and began to circle the calf. I gigged the colt and we pushed the calf and cow toward the ditch. I was hollering and wishing I had a shotgun, federal law from 1918 or no federal law. I pushed the pair down the ditch bank until they were hid in the thickets where the vultures couldn’t fly. Then I topped out of the ditch so I could check the rest of the cattle. I’d never seen carrion birds so aggressive.
I unsaddled back at Dave’s but kept the sorrel tied in the barn alley. I looked in the saddle room for horseshoes and tools. I found some scattered shoeing stuff of Dave’s, then got started. The only thing that keeps you in shape to shoe horses is shoeing horses, so I took my time, keeping an eye out for Kip, the ironpumpers, or the Miller brothers. Hoyt had all those rascals interested in what he was doing out in that barren field, though I wasn’t quite sure why.
Sarah pulled into the yard about thirty minutes later as I was clinching the second front foot with a driving hammer. If Dave had alligators or a clinch block, I hadn’t found them.
“Planning on riding some rough country?” she said.
“You never know.”
Sarah watched me until I set the foot down. She disappeared down a row of stalls, and I could hear her rooting and clanking in the grain room. She came back lugging my shoeing box with all my tools.
“You left this stuff at the saddle shed at the pack station when you reenlisted,” she said, “like you expected that not a single thing would change while you were away. When Dominion kicked Harvey out, I thought this might get lost in the shuffle when they tore the place down. I didn’t want you to come back and get all pissed when you found some Dominion cowboy using your nice aluminum shoeing box and dulling up your GE nippers.” She set the box down. “Not that I ever thought you were coming back.”
“Well, thanks for that—I guess.”
“I’m going in to shower and change,” she said. “If Kip’s not back from Carson, you want to get some dinner?”
I said I did and went back to shoeing. I dusted the sparrow shit and feathers off the box and got the sorrel squared away with my own tools. Then I turned all the horses out. By six we headed off for dinner in Sarah’s truck. On the way I had her detour up the lane to Hoffstatler’s. We could see out across the pastures from the deserted barnyard. Hoyt’s truck hadn’t moved. I told her what I thought it all meant, and that if the truck was still there in the morning, I wanted to ride up to False Spring to see what happened to him. Then we headed up the Reno Highway to grab a couple of rib eyes at the State Line Lodge.
“You’re really serious that Dad’s disappearance is connected to this water business,” Sarah said. We were eating our salads and drinking some wine, sitting in a booth by the big windows.
“I don’t see how it couldn’t be. It’d be the biggest change he had in his life”—I looked through the glass at the reservoir—“since you got married.”
She gave me a hard look.
“The water might be only half the reason, though.” The lodge and casino were on a bluff above the lake. I’d never seen the water so low.
“If Hoyt’s not back,” she said, “what do you think you’ll find up at False Spring?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t have to go.”
“Well, if you go I’m going with you,” she said. “I’ll take that sick day.”
The waiter took our salad plates and set down the steaks.
“If Kip pulls in when we’re loading or sees Dad’s rig gone, I don’t quite know how I’d explain that,” she said.
I told her I was borrowing Dan’s truck and trailer for just that reason. We kicked around a couple of possibilities of where we could load the horses in the morning without getting seen.
“So,” she said. “What would be the other thing you think might be the cause of Dad vanishing?”
“Rather not say till this shakes out. Don’t want to piss you off.”
“Since when?” she said.
After dinner we made the same detour to Hoffstatler’s barnyard and saw the same thing—the truck right where Hoyt left it. I called his cell and it went straight to voicemail. Then I called Dan Tyree and told him I’d see him dark and early. He said he’d leave the rig at the county arena to save me driving out to the ranch.
At her place Sarah and I walked back down the lane into the ranchyard. We stood under a cottonwood by the porch of Dave’s house. Across the yard the doublewide was dark and the ironpumpers’ trailer was dark and just as I’d left it after talking to Jedediah. Even the vultures’ cottonwood was still. The night was warm for early May, and we talked about the past and about horses, and not about the fact that after several days with no word she might be ready to accept that her father was dead. She told me it was comfortable to see me shoeing one of her dad’s horses and asked if I remembered the time I drove into this yard with Lester and my own dad when she was in college and shoeing her barrel-racing mare. Lester had made a crack that made her so mad she threatened to part his hair with a rasp.
“Whatever he said really chapped my hide,” she said.
“All he hollered was that you were too good-looking to be shoeing. We were only maybe fourteen, and you were so pretty we couldn’t stand it. He didn’t mean nothing by it.”
“So you do remember,” she said.
We stood close in the dark. I was gamey with the smell you get from horses’ feet and corral dust and your own sweat, but I could smell her skin and her hair fresh from washing. I remembered everything we’d ever done together, but there was no point in telling her now. She let the pup out of the run and fed it while we talked about the next day. Then I squeezed her hand and got in my truck and drove up the lane toward my mom’s.
Sarah and I were on the phone by five thirty in the morning. She told me she had walked out north of her house before she went to bed and had seen a bit of light out across Hoffstatler’s field by Hoyt’s truck. The light had moved and flickered like a flashlight or a phone, and then was gone. She’d looked outside in the gray dawn just before she called me to see if Kip’s truck was back from Carson. It wasn’t, so she was alone in the doublewide, and I was glad of it. She told me she’d throw some hay in her pickup and scatter it along the fence half a mile from the corrals so we could catch the horses and load them in Dan’s trailer without anyone even noticing.
I had breakfast with Mom and Burt while I explained what I was up to. I gathered my gear, including Dad’s .270 with my Leupold scope, saddle pockets with a whiskey flask and box of shells, and a jacket. I was on the road to Piute Meadows by six.
I pulled alongside the county arena by six forty, parked my truck, and locked it like I was back in Georgia. I secured my gear on Dan’s flatbed and found the key under the floormat. The arena was at the edge of town a couple of blocks past the jail, with no houses close. I was back at the south end of Shoshone Valley by quarter to eight. I never did get a call from Hoyt that morning.
Sarah was waiting for me about a quarter mile up a curvy back road, parked where she couldn’t be seen from the highway. We’d planned our rendezvous like a couple of cheaters. She looked calm and pretty and was wearing her new armitas. We loaded our saddles, blankets, bridles, a couple of brushes, and a can of grain into Dan’s rig.
“You drive. You know the road.”
“Okay,” she said.
She drove north up the paved road through the sagebrush east of the valley floor. I poured myself some coffee from her thermos and caught a hint of her scent again mingled with the smell of t
he coffee. There were a few newer houses along the way, but mostly the road was isolated, far from ranch headquarters and houses and corrals. We pulled even with Dave’s place down to our left when the road turned to gravel. Sarah parked, and we walked down a dirt lane to Dave’s horse pasture. About twenty head were along the fence eating the hay she’d scattered that morning. We caught her bay and the sorrel and I looked across the pasture to the ranchyard as we brushed their backs. Everything looked quiet and still. I saw a bird circle the buildings. It could’ve been a red-tail or it could’ve been a vulture. It was too far off to tell, just a tiny cut in the sky. We saddled up, loaded the horses, and got rolling.
A mile further on, Sarah turned up a rougher road that forked to the right and climbed bare hills. She pulled the rig around on a rise ten minutes later, giving us a view of the valley. We unloaded the horses without saying much, and I caught her watching me lift Dad’s rifle scabbard from the flatbed.
“Expecting trouble?” she said.
“Just cautious. If I was expecting trouble, I’d have brought Becky Tyree’s forty-five as well.”
I buckled the scabbard on the offside then pulled the box of soft points from the saddle pockets. I took five rounds out of the box and put them in my shirt pocket, then put the box back and buckled on my chinks.
“So what if Kip comes home while we’re out here?”
“I texted him I was taking a day off,” she said. “Told him I needed to clear my head, so I’d offered to help Harvey check trail up on the Little Frémont for deer season.”
“Yeah, with opening day still four months off, I bet Kip totally believed that.”
“He doesn’t really savvy the rhythm of this country yet,” she said. “You can imagine what he’d think if he saw the two of us here, though. He’d think I’m sneaking you off into the tall pines for a little adultery.” She turned away from me and buckled on her service belt and pistol. That cop rig looked out of place hanging around her hips over the fringed waist of those pretty armitas.
“He already thinks so.”
I tied my jacket on the saddle and stepped aboard. This was her home country so she led the way. The road dropped down into a dry wash, and from then on we were out of sight of the valley. It got rough as we climbed, and the wash widened and deepened into a canyon with low hills on our right becoming high ridges topped with piñon against the sky. We took our time, our eyes on the stream-bed that had sent Hoyt Berglund here. We passed a sign that said we were entering National Forest. Even at a walk, we were making good time on the rough road.