by Bart Paul
“Jack Harney wondered if you’d help him tomorrow,” she said. She sat next to me at the plank table by the fire pit and put her arm around my neck.
“Doing what?” I knew the answer to that well enough.
“If that child isn’t found tonight,” she said, “he wants to bring up his new dog—and he wants you to go with him.”
“Cadaver dog?”
“Let’s just call it a search-and-rescue dog for now,” she said.
“Can’t Jack get somebody else? I can’t leave Harvey holding the short end again like I did today.”
“Jack asked for you.”
I could only nod, then she looked at me the way she did.
“You can ride my mare,” she said. “She’d love the work, and I’d love it if you did.”
CHAPTER THREE
Next morning, I saddled Sarah’s bay mare while I watched Jack Harney unload a rangy palomino gelding from a county trailer. A big mixed Lab sat tethered to the trailer, eager like he knew something was up and curious about Sarah’s Aussie. I put Hoot in our cabin and led the mare down past Harvey’s place to where Jack was parked. We talked about the missing girl, then about Sarah’s father, team roping, and sheriff department politics, which he said were usually worse than tribal politics.
“Gimme dogs and horses,” Jack said. “They got no politics except at feeding time.”
“What do you call that dog?”
“Spike,” he said.
“That’s original.” I looked his horse over. “This yellow guy new?”
“My nephew’s,” he said. “He’s off the Rez and needs lotsa wet saddle blankets.”
“You might want a shod horse where we’re going.”
“His feet are real tough,” Jack said. “Besides, you don’t wanna try and get under this bugger.”
“Get him sore-footed he’s less likely to buck you off?”
“Something like that,” he said.
We heard a motor in the distance that got louder fast. Then we heard a rumble and rattle down-canyon coming from the wooden bridge. Jack’s dog jumped up and stood real still, just staring in the direction of the noise and whimpering soft. I don’t know squat about motorcycles, but I still recognized the pop-pop sound of this one. A big Harley zipped out of the aspen then throttled down, and the rider looked around like he wasn’t sure which way he wanted to go. The guy stared at the half-done cabin. He was a big sucker, with a mustache and no sleeves. Jack seemed like he was laughing, but I couldn’t hear over the pop-popping. The guy looked up at us, then revved the bike and blasted by too close to the horses, making Jack’s yellow gelding plunge and rear where he was tied. I watched the guy heading up the road that passed the cabin. I hollered that he couldn’t ride that thing up the canyon, and he must have heard me ’cause he flipped me off and kept going. I could see Sarah step to the edge of the unfinished porch with the baby in her arms to see what the racket was all about, still in her tee shirt and underpants. She yelled something, but I couldn’t hear that over the bike noise either. The guy dropped his inside boot and did a tight three-sixty by the steps, watching my wife and baby and stirring up dust the whole time. It looked like he said something, then wagged his tongue at Sarah and chugged off up the road through the aspen.
I tightened my cinch and swung up on that mare before I knew what I was doing.
“Easy, big guy,” Jack said.
I goosed the mare and loosened my rope strap and shook out my loop. The Harley moved steady but not super-fast over unfamiliar ground. My horse got unwound and I was flat flying when I passed the cabin and Sarah shouted my name. I couldn’t make out what else she said, but by her tone I could tell she didn’t think I was doing something smart. By then the horse was closing the gap. I don’t think the guy heard me coming over the motor. I camped on his tail and shouted at him again to stop, just for form’s sake. Then I made my throw. The loop whipped over his shoulders and handlebars. I jerked my slack and took my dallies and sat back to see what would happen.
The guy went down hard. I sat there watching him not make a move, that two-banger still roaring in the dirt, the rear wheel racing above the ground, the whole machine sort of twitching under him and dust everywhere. I thought for a second I’d killed him. Then he stirred slow like he was checking himself for serious hurt. He switched off the motor and pulled my loop from around his handlebars and got to his feet. He looked shaky. I could see blood on his head and hand. He rubbed where the poly rope had burned his upper arm, and he moved with a bad limp so I figured he’d done some damage. He looked up at me all crazy-eyed.
“I’ve killed guys for less,” he said.
I coiled my string.
“That your woman?” he said.
“She’s her own woman.”
“I could call the law on you, shitkicker.”
I didn’t say anything, just tightened up my rope strap. I’d noticed folks’ threats got lamer as they lost their appetite for a fight. The guy and I both looked back at Jack trotting his horse towards us with his dog trailing behind. The horse was still goosey and gave the chopper lots of room. I saw the guy reach down to the bike, and saw the Nevada plate on the rear fender. He pulled a sort of cane that he’d clamped tight across his handlebars. It had a brass rattlesnake head for a knob, and the shaft was machined steel with little dark diamond patterns that stood out over the handlebar’s chrome. I was thinking you could beat someone to death with something like that. He used it to walk towards Jack and me, limping bad. He was bulked up on top but looked thin and frail below the waist, so I started to figure he had that limp before I’d roped him.
I watched the guy study Jack and his Frémont County badge and the uniform shirt he wore with his Wranglers, and saw the guy check out the Smith & Wesson .357 Jack carried. He took in everything in an instant—like he’d been in dicey spots before.
“Sign says no motor vehicles beyond this point,” Jack said.
“I saw this bastard in a crappy old Dodge driving up there yesterday,” the guy said. He looked around at the cabin and the corrals, and Harvey’s trailer above us in the trees. “What the hell do you do here that’s so damn special?”
“He’s a licensed outfitter, so he’s allowed, especially in emergencies,” Jack said. “You’re not.”
“You stay out of my way, Tonto,” he said, “or next time I see you, I’ll notch your ears.”
Jack smiled at him pleasant enough in an unpleasant sort of way. He watched the guy drag his Harley upright.
“Be with you in a sec, Jack. Just want a word with Sarah before we go.” Right away I was sorry I’d hinted that my pretty wife would be alone at the pack station that morning.
“I’ll be right here,” Jack said. He never took his eyes off the guy on the bike.
Sarah’d gone inside and slipped on some jeans. She walked back out on the steps barefoot, watching me ride up, the baby on her hip. It was about seven in the morning now.
“I bet you’ve wanted to do that your whole life,” she said.
I took the lunch she’d made for me. “Pretty much.”
“I know you’re worried about that little girl,” she said. “Don’t let it make you—”
“—a dick?”
She kissed me goodbye. “I was going to say ‘reckless.’”
I stowed the lunch in my saddle pockets and looked up as the Harley putt-putted by. The guy headed back towards the bridge, not seeing either of us, just looking steamed and sore. Then he turned real sudden and pointed right at me before he disappeared around the curve in the road.
I caught up with Jack on the trail. We rode on, silent for a bit, neither talking about what had just happened. Then Jack started telling me about his dog and how he got interested in having a search-and-rescue dog after he worked with an older deputy from the Mammoth Lakes office who’d trained one and used it on some cases down there. Then the guy trained it up as a cadaver dog to help find avalanche victims and missing hikers and such. That dog was so handy t
hat the deputy was asked by a veterans’ group to fly the dog across the Pacific to locate the bodies of some Tokyo-bound island hopping Marines buried in unmarked graves on Okinawa seventy years before. The dog found them quick—like they’d just been killed yesterday.
“I figured that with all the country we have to cover in this jurisdiction,” Jack said, “a good dog would be worth his keep.”
Jack’d been a friend of my dad’s while I was growing up and had been an investigator for the sheriff’s office for at least that long. The search-dog thing might’ve been something new but no surprise to folks who knew him. A pair of buzzards riding a downdraft slid by low in the sky. Jack’s face clouded up.
“Did you get a load of that bike?” he said. We were coming out of the tamarack towards the drift fence at the bottom of the second meadow.
“Not really.”
“That’s a Harley Speedster the guy modified for off-road,” he said, “but it’s still street-legal, I bet.”
“The guy ridin’ it didn’t seem so street-legal.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “I thought he was gonna go all Revenant on your ass.” He called for his dog to keep up. “He said he useta be a highway patrolman.”
“You believe him?”
“Who knows? Said it was in Southern California,” Jack said. “LA. He asked if you knew who he was. He said maybe you knew him.”
“Never seen him before.”
“He must be a legend in his own mind.”
“That happens.”
“But I bet you see him again,” Jack said.
“He did threaten to kill me, so I just might.”
“Don’t laugh. Even if the guy pressed charges, that could be a hassle,” Jack said.
“I’m sure your boss would like that.”
“Sheriff Mitch has plumb mellowed on the subject of Tommy Smith since you and Sarah got married,” Jack said.
“That’ll be the day. I’m just wondering why that guy was watching me yesterday when I was looking for the kid.”
“Who knows,” Jack said. “He’s a long way from home.”
“So’s that kid.”
I dismounted at the drift fence gate and showed Jack what was left of the girl’s single footprint. He got down to look, then I handed him the Little Mermaid jacket for the dog to check out. From then on, that Lab was all business. We got down again at the Blue Rock to let the dog scout around till he was satisfied that the scent continued up-trail. We followed a windy path through timber and water, then broke out of the trees by the start of the Roughs.
“That dog gonna be okay crossing these rocks?”
“Spike’s got them big old paws,” Jack said. “He should be fine. I had him over worse.”
We took our time crossing the shale slide and let the dog take his. He was game, I’ll say that. We couldn’t tell if he was following a scent or just happy to be moving, but he was out in front the whole time. Beyond the shale, the trail slipped down into the trees. In a little while on our right was a vertical granite wall close enough to the trail to reach out and touch. To the left the creek had spread out into shallow ponds among the grass and pines in spotty sunlight. Over our heads a single stunted tamarack grew out of a cleft in the rock.
“This is about where Harvey said he found the jacket.”
“I can’t see how a little kid could get so damn far,” Jack said.
“I guess we’ll find out one way or the other.”
At a wide spot in the trail Jack got off the palomino and handed me his get-down rope. “I’ll follow Spike on foot,” he said. “That’ll give him some room.”
I let Jack walk off the trail. Holding the palomino, I watched from a ways back. That horse was sulky and fidgety, but I was keeping my eye on the dog. He was getting focused now and was cool to watch if you forgot the grim chore. I was studying him circle a bog when the palomino jerked back and like to dislocate my shoulder. I yanked the horse and cussed him out. Jack looked over and laughed.
“I always said these Rez horses don’t lead for crap.”
“‘Course not,” Jack said. “A guy’s supposed to get on a horse and ride ’em, not drag ’em around like some damn farmer.”
I got off to piss and let Jack and the dog keep exploring. He’d said these dogs did their best work without distractions. After a minute I got mounted, dallied the yellow horse close, and started dragging him up-trail, riding past Jack and looking for a place to tie up. I was in thick timber, the trail narrow and gently winding and the air cool in constant shade. To my right now, the canyon sloped up with granite and pine, the shady pine duff–covered dirt bare of most growth. To the left of the trail was deadfall and grass and more shallow, boggy ponds. I looked back, catching sight of Jack now and then and hearing him talk to the dog. His voice got excited, which never happened with Jack Harney. Then I heard him shout.
“Get back here, Tommy. We got a body.”
CHAPTER FOUR
I rode back and got off my horse. I could see Jack through the tamarack and wild rose, bending low in the shadows, looking at something on the ground. I watched him step down into one of the ponds and heard him sloshing along, talking to the dog that sat on the bank, alert but not moving. Bits of sunlight shone bright on the dog’s black hair, and he looked up a second when a Steller’s jay flew over him in the branches. Jack scanned the surface, then picked up a stick and reached out into the water with it, pulling out rotting branches and mats of leaves and pine needles. The dog cocked his head, watching. I tried to lead the horses closer, but Jack’s gelding was slow to move so I tied them both and waited. I told myself I didn’t want to distract the dog while he was working, but I really didn’t want to see that body. I’d seen more dead children than I could ever scrub from my nightmares.
“Hey, Tommy,” Jack said. “You better c’m’ere.”
From where I stood, I could see he’d snagged a bare arm out of the water with the stick. It looked thin and yellow and waxy even at a distance. Jack lost his purchase with the stick and the arm fell back into the water with a little slurp. I walked closer, staying on the trail as long as I could. I moved slow, checking the ground. A few feet from the trail I saw what looked to be a dollar bill in the wet grass. I bent down and picked it up. It was a hundred, faded and crumpled, but a Benjamin all the same.
“You gotta see this,” Jack said. He hove an armful of old vegetation on the grass and stared down into the little pond.
I pocketed the bill and walked up behind him. The dog hadn’t twitched a hair. I bent down and picked up another bill, a fifty that was torn across President Grant’s face. Jack turned back to me, looking just as confused as hell.
In the space Jack opened, there was a small body on its back in clear water, the face just under the surface, the light-colored hair all fanned out and moving back and forth ever so slight. The water was barely two feet deep, and the crushed granite sand under the body almost gold in the shifting sunlight cutting through the tamarack. A couple of pine cones floated on the surface of the freshly turned-up water, moving real slow as if they had all eternity to get downstream.
“The hell?”
“This ain’t right,” Jack said.
He turned to me and reached out his hand, and I pulled him out of the pond up onto the grass. I put the money I’d found in his hand. He looked down at it then back to the body. The face was sunk in and smooth like the features had been half washed away, and the eyes were bleached white and shrunk if you could even call them eyes anymore. The body looked to be a female, but it wasn’t the missing girl. It wasn’t Kayleeana. It was a small but full-grown woman, somehow familiar but as vague as a bad dream. Jack reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out two more hundreds.
“This is nuts,” he said. “Who the hell is this?”
Jack took out his phone and started taking pictures. I stood at the water’s edge just looking at the corpse, trying to remember. The dog came up behind me and sat, leaning against my leg enough for me to feel hi
m quiver.
“Ain’t this maybe Erika Hornberg?” Jack said.
“The bank manager?”
“Yeah. You knew her, right?”
“I known her my whole life. When Dad ran Allison’s, her dad’s ranch was just south of us.”
“Pruney as this body is, it still kinda looks like her,” Jack said. “I recognize them big old gypsy earrings she always wore.”
“I haven’t seen her since before I signed up. Since the summer I got out of high school.”
Jack held up the four bills we’d just found. “All those stories about her getting away with the bank’s millions,” he said. “I guess they were all true.”
“If it’s her, how you figure she ended up here?”
Jack put the money and his phone back in his shirt pocket.
“No clue,” he said. “Hasn’t been a trace of her since last fall when they found her car at the trailhead above the pack station site and folks figured she was going to hide out in the high country, or maybe hike out to Little Meadows or Summers Lake. Like maybe she had another car waiting, or maybe an accomplice. It’d be a helluva hike either way, but Erika was a hiking fool. Real outdoorsy type. Hike, climb, the whole deal. She could hike to Yosemite Valley, she wanted to. Most folks thought she’d left a false trail then skipped down to old Mexico or Costa Rica or some damn place to start a new life.”
“Well, she didn’t get far.”
“It’s weird we went looking for one body and found another,” he said. “This one looks like a freakin’ alien.”
“Weird don’t begin to describe it.”
What I remember next was five quick rifle shots. Maybe six. They seemed like they were coming from above us, across the trail and up the slope in the trees. They zipped and popped, some ripping and snapping branches just over our heads, some pinging against the granite. Jack gave a yelp. I saw him spin and fall into the pond on top of the body, and I heard a branch break and saw that damned yellow horse plunging and tugging, his head shaking back and forth as he pulled until something broke. Then that bugger crashed on out of there heading down the trail at a dead run. Sarah’s mare was spooked, and she danced but stayed tied. The dog was watching Jack just still as could be. Being a retriever, gunfire didn’t faze him a bit.