Cheatgrass

by Bart Paul

  I hit a high trot down the road toward it. When I was about a quarter mile away from the sheep, I could see blue and red lights from a cruiser or ambulance heading my way with dust from the road rising behind. I gigged that sorrel and we rattled south toward the lights, the bay running stride for stride at my knee. The lights were from another SUV and it was rolling right along, closing in on the sheep. When I got closer, I could see the herder in his camp and see a black mule picketed uphill near a tent. I left the road with the horses bounding over the sage, circling uphill as best I could without starting a damn sheep stampede. I waved at Eufemio as I passed close by, scattering ewes and lambs. I pointed at the SUV closing in, then at myself, and I saw Eufemio laugh. Then he ignored me and helped his grand-nephew and a dog settle the sheep as I tucked those horses in close to his stake-bed trailer on its uphill side and jumped off, using it for cover. Eufemio waved at the deputies in the SUV as it cruised by a hundred yards away. I hunkered down, watching the deputies through the wood slats. They were from Douglas County too, so there was a good chance somebody’d called in the first of those corpses. Whether it was Kip or Roger or even the Mexican in the gooseneck before he got stomped, it didn’t matter.

  Eufemio’s trailer looked semi-homemade and it stunk, but it hid me well enough. The powers that be don’t pay much mind to guys like Eufemio. They’re pretty much just invisible.

  The SUV was lost in its own dust. Eufemio came over happy as hell to see me and gave me a big abrazo, smelling like sheep dip, Dago red, and cigarettes.

  “Mister Tomás—otra vez tú!?” he said. “What have you done now, my little drunkard?”

  “Nothing so bad this time, you mangy sheep stealer. For now, viejo, I just need a ride.”

  I must have looked like death, because the kid gave me a water jug and I took a long drink. I told Eufemio that there’d been a little misunderstanding with the law that I didn’t have time to straighten out. I asked him for a ride south, as close as he could get me to Rickey Junction. He had half a dozen wooly pairs to take to headquarters for doctoring and said I was welcome to ride along, and he’d try to drop me off as close as he could. He said he’d tie the mule in the front with my saddle horses so they’d attract less attention.

  We loaded the mule first, then my horses. I sat down in the semi-dry sheepshit as Eufemio loaded the ewes and lambs behind me. He said adios to the boy and climbed into the International and off we went. The sides of the trailer only came up to my horses’ briskets, so they were looking all around, just curious and windblown as we rattled down the slope to the dirt road.

  We passed the abandoned hot springs and I could see newer houses on five-acre lots uphill in the sage, and see a Copper County, Nevada sheriff’s cruiser parked where the pavement began. I’d crossed the Douglas-Copper county line about where the first EMT bought it, so now I had two jurisdictions looking for me. A deputy leaned against the cruiser talking to a retired guy in a ballcap. Eufemio pulled over and lit a cigarette as casual as could be. He made a gesture I couldn’t make out and I heard him laugh. I was sitting low, holding the Mossberg across my lap and missing my jacket in the cold. I wasn’t about to shoot any law enforcement, but I wasn’t above a little threat if it came to that. Finally Eufemio put the truck in gear. We chugged past the deputy and I snuck a look through the slats. He glanced at the two saddle horses riding with the mule, but lucky for me two well-bred quarter horses and six grand in saddles didn’t quite register with him as being out of place. He must have been another town guy who only saw the ratty trailer full of animals and the ratty old man behind the wheel.

  Eight miles south, we came to a T in the road with cruisers from both counties parked on opposite sides of the junction. Both deputies stayed inside their vehicles out of the wind. The right turn led uphill out of the valley where Eufemio would have no cause to go. That road led to Rickey Junction about twenty highway miles away. The left turn led toward the valley farms where Eufemio’s Basque boss had his sheep headquarters. Eufemio turned left as I hugged the floorboards. I didn’t know what he had in mind, but he didn’t have much choice. Peeking through the slats, I could see the deputies hadn’t even looked up. Eufemio slowed as the road passed through some cottonwoods by a farm implement store, a bar, a brick slaughterhouse, and a hairdresser’s and such. I knew that on the right would be a big old house next to an even older ranch-country general store. Eufemio surprised me when he turned up past those, staying on a gravel road that followed along the West Frémont into a rocky canyon. That clever old bastard was taking me toward Rickey Junction on a route that wouldn’t be watched.

  We passed the buildings and entered some cottonwoods along the creek. I stood up next to the mule and held on to the top slat, rocking along and watching the country. I looked back and could see that no one was following. Ahead, the canyon widened out and fell away as the road climbed past old stock pens in the rocks along some meadow. We topped out in open sagebrush where I could see the irrigation reservoir and Reno Highway off in the distance. Eufemio drove slow for another bouncy ten minutes until he found a place to turn the rig around. He stopped and opened the trailer gate and we jumped my horses out.

  “This is as far as I can go,” Eufemio said, “or the old boss will think I ran off with his granddaughter.” Eufemio was close to eighty so he laughed like hell. We looked down into Shoshone Valley. Hills blocked my view of Dave’s ranch but I knew it was only about five miles away down the dirt road. Eufemio dug a clear glass half-gallon jug of red wine from the truck cab and we shared a few gulps. It tasted terrible but felt good going down. After the second swig Eufemio put his hand on my shoulder.

  “Is something hunting you, Tomás? Besides the sheriffs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then may God have mercy on them.”

  He drove off with a nod like a gravedigger. I checked my cinches and weapons and started the long trot to Dave’s. I was hoping Burt was there, because I needed an ally bad. If he wasn’t, I was hoping I’d find Kip or some of his crew. I was trying not to be too terrified about what he was doing to Sarah. I knew what my worrying about her was doing to me. It was exactly the thing about me that troubled her the most. Eufemio was right. I wanted people to die.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Somewhere in the sagebrush an hour later I crossed the dry wash that had been False Spring Creek. The creek had buried a three-foot culvert and packed it full of rock and sand like concrete in the days when the water flowed. I could look back into the mouth of the canyon where Sarah and I had explored the spring six days back. That felt like forever. Almost as soon as Eufemio left me, I had to slow to a walk as the road was bad and even shod horses would get footsore fast. The day was getting on. With the slow pace and the wind picking up and me with no hat and no jacket, I was working on a vile mood.

  I crossed southwest into California about twenty minutes further on. By then I was in sight of Dave’s headquarters, and the sun was dropping behind the mountains.

  I stopped way out from the buildings to study things. There was no sign of Burt’s Ford, so I figured he was with Mom at the hospital. My Dodge was parked under the cottonwood where I left it. I knew there was a chance that Kip was holding Sarah here, but I doubted it. Still, he knew I’d have to stop here to make sure, so I figured he’d have some sort of welcome planned. I took a gate into the horse pasture and kept the barn between me and the house as I rode. Swarms of cliff swallows flapped from mud nests in barn eaves, cruising and diving for mosquitoes in the sunset afterglow. I tied up behind the barn, pulled the .45 and eased in a side door, making sure that I was alone before I unsaddled and turned the horses out. When the rigs were both stowed I stayed back in the shadows, looking out open doors and barn windows. There were no lights on in the house, but Burt must have left the yard light on earlier in the day because I could see its glow above me in the gathering dusk.

  I was too sore and cold to dawdle, so I took the Mossberg from Sarah’s saddle and gimped across t
he middle of the yard to the house. If somebody wanted to start it up, they wouldn’t get a better chance. I made it to the porch without incident and dragged up the steps. I held the 12 gauge level when I pushed the front door open. The place was empty and tidy, but I checked every room before I pulled a frozen pizza from the freezer, threw it in the microwave and tracked down that bottle of Jim Beam. While the pizza was nuking, I dug around the porch and found an old chore coat of Dave’s and put it on. I took a not-too-grimy hat from the rack, tried it on for size, then set it on the table. I let the pup from his run and gave him some kibble. He was glad for the company and followed me down the hall to Sarah’s room. I had five shells for the Mossberg but wanted more to be safe. I rooted around her desk drawers but didn’t find any. The 12 gauge pump she carried was sheriff’s issue, so she probably got her ammo from the department. I opened a couple of dresser drawers, but looking at her old socks and panties and Navajo jewelry only depressed me. I opened a wooden box on her dresser and saw a clipping from the Copper County Currier headlined, “Piute Meadows Boy Reenlists,” with a bad picture of me in uniform and lame words from some reporter I’d never met. I slammed it shut and hustled back to the hallway.

  I closed the pup in Dave’s room out of harm’s way and sat at the table with the lights off eating the pizza. My chair faced the open front door, the Mossberg resting next to the whiskey glass at my right hand, a shell chambered and ready.

  I was about full and it was about dark when the black GMC with the busted tailgate pulled into the yard. I chewed my pizza and finished my drink, just watching the other Miller boy and the big weightlifter get out, joking as if they were alone in the world. The big guy carried what looked like an AK-47 and wore a camo hoodie. The Miller boy wore a buckaroo hat as big as a beach umbrella and the same revolver I’d seen him packing in Aspen Canyon. Might have been a .357. It looked small against his fat waist. He carried what looked like a nice Browning side-by-side, too. I had the bad thought that if I shot him, I just might take that shotgun from him and keep it. I’d always hankered for one of those old Brownings, but he could die with that hat. I watched them pass a bottle of Cuervo back and forth as they headed around the property together to make their rounds. It didn’t seem to occur to them that somebody might have come horseback, and it sure didn’t occur to them to check the other buildings. Especially the one with the door wide open and the guy with the 12 gauge watching them from the dark.

  I waited for them to walk back into the yard light before I stepped outside with the Jim Beam in one hand and the Mossberg in the other. They still didn’t notice me until I tapped the shotgun barrel on the porch rail and hollered at them.

  “All right, you honyockers, what’ll it be?”

  I took a last pull on the bottle and set it on the rail before they fired off a couple of rounds and I dodged for cover. They were scrambling backwards, not even hitting the house. Once they got themselves hid, I heard the big weightlifter laugh.

  “You gonna hafta get in close with that shotgun, chump,” he said.

  I walked down the steps, taking my time.

  “Close is good.”

  I shot out the yard light on the peak of the barn wall. Cliff swallows shrieked and scattered, and I could hear those two yelling as I hustled into the shadows and the dark settled around the buildings.

  I heard a bottle break and one of them cuss the other. They started taking random shots like they didn’t have a clue where to aim. I could hear them muttering and arguing.

  “You never gonna see that yellow-haired girl again,” the Miller boy said real loud.

  Then the weightlifter hollered something way worse about Sarah, but I was long gone from the place they were shouting at. They both sounded stupid and scared, and so sloshed on tequila I could hear them trying to be quiet. My eyes had adjusted to the dusk, and I knew just where everything on that ranch should be, so I could guess where and how they would come at me. I watched their dark shapes moving as they split up, the weightlifter jogging along the open shed, making random shots with his AR. A couple came too close for comfort. I faded around the barn and followed their muzzle flash as easy as taillights.

  At the end of the barn I slipped through the grain chute of the feed bin at the end of a row of work-team stalls. I stopped to listen and could hear a steel corral gate screech and the sound of footsteps scuffing the dirt. I opened the feed bin door and the spring made a squeak, but I made it to the cover of the first stall without seeing anyone. Across the center alley of the barn was another row of stalls with an open door at the far end. I waited in the darkness. I could look past the stalls to that open door and the evening sky beyond it and hear whispers too faint to understand. After a minute the weightlifter stepped up into the open doorway and stopped, holding his Kalashnikov in firing position as he looked right at where I was hidden in the dark. The big fool was framed by that doorway just pretty as a picture. I almost felt bad shooting him.

  He flew backwards out the door and fell against draft horse stocks made of four-inch steel pipe. His head hit the pipe so hard I could hear it clang.

  The Miller boy shouted the big guy’s name. When he didn’t get an answer, he shouted louder like that would bring him back to life. I was in the middle of the barn walking down the center alley facing the house across the yard, chambering another shell. I could see the Miller boy running for his truck, if you could call that running. He yanked open the GMC’s door, and the dome light in the cab lit him up. I took his legs out with the next shot as I stepped out of the barn, and told him to keep his hands where I could see them.

  He was leaning on one elbow whimpering when I got to him. I pulled his .357 from its holster, ejected the rounds, and picked up the shotgun and set them in the bed of his truck. The barrel of the side-by-side felt rusted and the stock had a wobble to it. So much for stealing it. This guy probably ripped it off from somebody even more wasted than he was.

  “So, you the one shouted those things about Sarah Cathcart?”

  “Screw you, soldier,” he said. Then he puked.

  I touched his mangled leg with my boot and he yelled. In the dome light I could see a lot of blood and muscle, maybe a little bone.

  “You got something you want to say about her?” I poked him with my boot again, harder this time.

  “Goddamn. You gonna call nine-one-one, you prick?”

  “Maybe I’ll call four-one-one and ask for the number of somebody who gives a shit if you live or die. Jesus, you stink.” I jostled him hard.

  He yelled really loud then.

  “Best tell me where she is.”

  “I dunno, goddamnit,” he said. “Kip never tells me nothin’. That whack job ain’t paying me enough for this shit.”

  “You’re a little late coming to that conclusion, bud.”

  I stepped away from the stink of him and he fell back in the dirt, whimpering louder.

  “You got anything to drink?”

  “Yeap.”

  I could see headlights turning down the lane from the Reno Highway about a mile away. If they were Kip’s, that didn’t leave me much time. I faded back into the dark to wait and see who it was. I still had two shells left, but I drifted toward the barn to get the .270 off my saddle if I needed it.

  “I said, you got anything to drink?”

  I could tell it was a Ford quick enough. It stopped a ways away from the house as soon as its headlights hit the GMC. The Ford’s passenger door opened, but the light didn’t show anybody in the cab. Burt had rolled out on that side and I could see his big shape hustling behind a cottonwood with a weapon ready—probably his AR. I liked this guy more and more.

  I yelled at Burt and told him things were clear. He came over, and we sat on the porch steps drinking Jim Beam out of the bottle as he told me how well Mom was doing and I told him what had happened the last couple of days. The Miller boy hollered at us once or twice more, then got quiet. He was probably getting a little shocky by now. Burt asked me what I wanted him
to do. I handed him a piece of paper with some writing on it.

  “We probably need to report this mess and get this piece of crap to a hospital. Here’s the number of a Douglas County deputy named Roger Parrott. He’d be the guy to call.”

  “Being as we’re in Frémont County, California,” Burt said, “why am I calling the Nevada law?”

  I handed the bottle back to him. “Sarah’s boss is a chucklehead. First off, Mitch may try to arrest me for a couple of murders, and I don’t have time for that tonight.”

  Then I heard a sound from out of the past and it made me jump. Dave’s landline was ringing. I hobbled back into the kitchen and grabbed the phone off the wall.

  “Talk to me.”

  “Tommy Smith?”

  It was Aaron Fuchs.

  “You’re a hard guy to get hold of,” he said.

  I filled him in on our trip out to Dave’s permit, right up to the shooting of the second Miller brother here in the yard. I told him Kip had taken Sarah. He told me the details of the shoot-out at the State Line Lodge, the break-in at the Shoshone Valley ranch house about a mile from where I was sitting, and the BOLO all the local agencies had out on the two weightlifters and the Miller brothers, which he figured he could cancel now.

  “There’s a BOLO out on you, too, you know,” he said.

  “Figured.”

  “Douglas County just found a pretty classy looking Mustang with Georgia plates in the State Line Lodge parking lot. Both the car and the Beretta in the glove box were registered to you.”

  “Affirmative.”

  “And the tip to the agency was made from your cell phone about an hour ago.”

  “I’m a self-destructive sonofabitch.”

  He laughed until I asked him about the wounded deputy Roger had told me about. Fuchs said the guy died in the Gardnerville hospital that morning.