"I'm on my way now, Mister Bell. I'm...."
"There are things you should know and do, Sheriff." Clicker was in a hurry.
"Colonel Maynard is alive and on his way to Sheridan.
"He was shot from across our lake maybe by a stray bullet, maybe not"
"What...."
The Sheriff tried to interrupt. Boynton did not like being talked at. "I'll be there in five, Mister Bell."
Clicker paid no attention.
"There is only one road on the other side of our lake. If you close off each end we may get lucky and trap whoever fired before they get away."
There was an extended silence while the Sheriff thought it over. When he answered, his irritation showed, but he understood. "I'll get on that, Bell."
Clicker noticed that he had lost the "Mister."
Bell immediately redialed. This time he got the kitchen at the ranch house.
"Mary Beth? This is Clicker. I...."
"Oh, Clicker! We heard the Colonel was shot. Say it isn't so."
"It's so, Mary Beth, but he is alive and on his way to the hospital.
"Now, I need you to help me with something important."
The cook was confused. "I'll help anyway, I can, Clicker, but...."
Bell cut her short. "You live out along the dirt road that climbs the mountain and comes out way over to the east, don't you, Mary Beth?"
"Yes, it's Bower Road, and we're out about five miles"
"Your husband is home, isn't he, Mary Beth?"
"He's probably there. He is still getting over his wreck, you know."
Clicker knew. Mary Beth's man had caught a boot toe on the ground in front of the foot peg of his Honda crotch rocket—while moving. Now he was learning to use his new knee.
"I want you to call him. Get him to sit by the edge of the road and write down the license plate number of every car that comes east on that road between now and when you get home. If he knows who is in the vehicle, have him write that down also."
"He can do that, Clicker. Is this part of finding out who shot Colonel Maynard?"
"It sure is, Mary Beth, and get him to hustle." The cook, Clicker believed, was quicker than the Sheriff. "You tell your husband that we will pay him his usual wages to do this and that it might be very important."
Clicker turned to the milling ranch owners.
"OK, here's what I know and think so far." The wealthy men listened as if the retired Gunny Sergeant was an oracle.
"The Colonel was shot from very long range. If it was an accident, we will probably find the guy wandering along completely oblivious to what he has done." Clicker filled in a little.
"It could be an accident. There are people with guns in the woods all of the time, but...." Bell paused for effect. "There should not be anyone on our land, and someone shooting at targets or rocks—at a prairie dog or whatever—would likely shoot more than once. There haven't been any more shots.
"If some bastard shot the Colonel on purpose we've got to start hunting him right now."
Clicker cocked his ear. A siren shrieked in the distance. The approach of Sheriff I. B. Boynton was scaring the cattle.
Boynton was always reelected, but no one Clicker Bell knew had a good word for their perennial sheriff. The man's I. B. initials were often translated to "Irritated Bowel." The Sheriff's demeanor did seem continually exasperated, but no one ever discovered what their sheriff was distressed about.
Boynton brought his police car to a skidding, broad sliding halt just as Clicker Bell stepped off his front porch carrying a rifle and a pair of binoculars.
Ignoring the Sheriffs dramatic arrival, Bell went directly to the wall overlooking the lake, leaned his rifle against the stones, and began scoping the far lake-side.
Boynton hurried to the owners and began shaking hands with the important men while commiserating about the tragic event that was "simply beyond comprehension."
Clicker was glassing the rise of earth beyond the lake when the Sheriff got to him.
Boynton stepped alongside and stared at the distant trees. "The hunter, or whatever he was, wouldn't still be there, Mister Bell."
"Agreed, Sheriff. If I thought he might be I wouldn't expose myself. I'm getting oriented so that I can figure where the shot probably came from."
"The State Police will put their investigators on it, but I don't know what we can do about an accident, anyway." The Sheriff frowned mightily, "We should have better control over who has guns around here."
Clicker did not agree in any way. The right to own and enjoy weapons was, as it should be, a constitutional right, and the last thing needed were more laws enforced by low-wattage officials like I. B. Boynton. Clicker withheld his opinion and told the sheriff what he could.
"The Colonel was standing right here, but on top of the wall. He was just looking around when a bullet hit him in the chest. He fell on this side of the wall, and he was conscious when we got him on the chopper."
Bell finished explaining and pointed at the distant hillside. "I'm going over there now, Sheriff. I think the shot came from more than halfway up the hill and more or less straight across from us."
Boynton was not so sure. "I can't have you poking about in a possible crime scene, Mister Bell. You could trample important evidence. You just wait until the troopers get here and see what they have to say."
Clicker nodded. "Fine idea, Sheriff. I'll just run down to the road intersection on the south end of the lake and keep an eye out for anyone passing who might have seen something. Then I'll talk with the troopers' man-trackers when they show up. They have man-trackers, don't they, Sheriff?"
Boynton blustered because he had no idea what the State Police had or would make available.
"Well, now, Mister Bell, I'm sure the troopers will come with whatever is necessary." He examined his watch as if it held special information. "They'll be on the road by now, and we'll see pretty soon."
Clicker left the Sheriff studying the distant hills with his naked eyes and strode to the owners.
"Our sheriff has ordered me to stay away from where I think the shot was fired, but I'm going over there anyway. Just don't let him know.
"I can't see the State Police spending a lot of time trying to find where one shot was fired. They'll go with the idea of an accidental shooting, and they may be right, but I don't think so."
"My God, Clicker, why would anyone shoot Colonel Maynard? He was never in intelligence or around spying or anything like that, was he?" There was a great shaking of heads among the owners.
Bell's shrug was noncommittal. "I don't know, but I've spent a large part of my life behind a rifle, and the improbability of a single accidental shot from nearly a thousand yards striking the only man showing gets my attention."
Shelby Grant said, "Do you know how to follow people in woods and things like that, Clicker? I know you were a Marine, but....''
Clicker saw the sheriff coming, so he spoke quickly while turning toward his truck.
"I'll know more than anyone the troopers are likely to send. Just don't announce my destination to I. B."
To reach the lake end, Clicker had to drive through the ranch complex and down a lengthy twist of dirt road. At the lake's outlet he crossed a concrete dam that created the body of water and almost immediately intersected a second road that paralleled the lake on its far side. He turned onto that road and drove until he believed he was about opposite his lodge.
Although following the lake, the road had once been a logging trail, and it did not stay close to the water. A shooter could have left his vehicle along the road, climbed uphill to fire his shot, then returned to his car and driven away—all concealed by the trees and a few dips and hollows along the hillside.
Bell hoped that the sheriff had the road ends corked and that Mary Beth's husband had his pencil and pad ready on the only other way out. If everybody was in place, they should discover who had been in the woods at the time the Colonel was shot. Hell, they should know who had shot him
because no one else was likely to have been driving around this part of the Sixplex Ranch.
The first thing to do would be to drive the length of the road and see if a car might still be waiting. Improbable but possible, Bell figured. He drove at normal speed peering into the woods bordering the road but found nothing.
Beyond the lake's north end he U-turned and started back far more slowly. Now, he would seek marks of vehicles having parked alongside or turned off the road. Trees grew close against the packed dirt road, and there were no prepared berms or shoulders. If a vehicle turned off, there would be tire marks.
The distance involved was little more than a mile, and again Clicker found nothing. The third task would be to run out Mary Beth's side road and learn what her husband had detected. Clicker strained his memory, but he could not recall the man's name.
The husband had placed an old porch rocker alongside his mailbox and was reading a paperback when Clicker's truck appeared.
Because he was watching, Bell saw the man unobtrusively remove a pencil or pen from his shirt pocket and prepare to record the license number on a book page. Clicker was grateful that the husband was using care. If there had been a sniper, who could say that the villain might not just as readily shoot down a witness?
Nothing! Not a single vehicle had come down the road since his wife's call.
Bell encouraged the man to keep watching, then spun his truck around and started back toward the lake. He again watched the road edges, but the borders appeared undisturbed. Where then? He hesitated at the Bower Road intersection.
A State Police patrol car approached from the south, and Clicker blinked his lights to show recognition. The police car pulled over and a large and muscular trooper matched Bell's immediate dismount. The trooper's hand remained close to his holstered pistol, and Bell quickly identified himself.
The trooper was dark skinned and high cheekboned. His short cropped hair was raven black. An Indian, Bell reasoned.
"Thought it would be you, Mister Bell." The trooper's grip was strong. "We've got a Lieutenant Gilbert joining us from the Sheriff's department. You know him?"
Bell kept his voice noncommittal. "Heard of him." He could have added that nothing he had heard was particularly positive. One of L B. Boynton's cronies, he believed.
Trooper Jason McWide sounded interested. "You come onto anything?"
"Nothing, Trooper ... which in a way tells me something."
"Call me Mac, if it suits you, Mister Bell. What does nothing show you?"
"Mac it is, and I am Clicker. I found no sign of a vehicle being parked or turning off along this or Bower road. That could indicate that someone was being mighty careful about leaving traces."
McWide said, "I love logic like that, Clicker. If you find something it means there's a criminal about. If you don't find anything, that is even more suspicious."
Despite the seriousness of the problem, Bell found himself grinning. "I'm good at this sort of detecting because I watched nearly every Perry Mason show they had."
A police cruiser with all lights flashing was coming north. Clicker pointed it out.
McWide sighed and shook his head. "Well, the big guns have arrived. I figure the case is about to be solved." He muttered darkly, "I wonder who all those lights are supposed to impress?"
Bell was more than a little surprised because police rarely included civilians in their inside humor. He gathered that Lieutenant Gilbert's reputation was common knowledge.
"Howdy, McWide."
"Lieutenant."
Bell was being ignored.
"What have you found out?"
"Just got here. Clicker's been doing the investigating."
"Clicker?" The lieutenant sounded offended.
McWide used his thumb in Bell's direction. "That's him right there, Lieutenant. Mister Clicker Bell. Said to be Colonel Maynard's right hand man and a witness to the incident."
Clicker waited, and after a lengthy moment, Gilbert extended a hand for shaking.
"Sheriff said you had probably snuck on down here, Bell." The man's grip was suggestively strong. Clicker matched it.
When Clicker offered nothing, Gilbert was forced to ask, "So, what have you found out?"
Clicker repeated his discovery of nothing, and the Lieutenant snorted his expectation of exactly that result.
"Man wandering with a gun probably came in miles up the road and just happened to let off a careless round along in here somewhere."
Clicker began an exasperated retort, but McWide stood behind the Lieutenant waving him off with a hand and a don't-waste-your-time headshake. Bell smothered his opinion.
The trooper said, "What do you think we should do, Lieutenant?" Clicker saw McWide's grin and kept his own features expressionless.
Gilbert was surprised by the request for his plan and fumbled his response.
"Why ... ah ... I guess we just go back and tell 'em there's nothing to be seen down here." This time, McWide held his nose behind the Lieutenant's back, and Clicker had to dip his head to hide his smile.
McWide asked, "What do you plan to do, Bell?"
"I'm going to drive back down the road until I am directly opposite the lodge. Then I'm going to climb this hill until I am close to where the shot had to come from. From that point I will begin to search for sign."
"Sign?" McWide was again grinning.
"Yeah, Mac, sign. Like footprints or even cigarette butts. If the shooter stayed in one spot for a long time, he might have been glassing for a target."
Gilbert's snort was pure disdain. "There's miles of mountain, Mister Bell. We couldn't have a chance in hell of finding where one man walked."
Clicker said, "I don't mind looking alone, Lieutenant."
Gilbert was quick to protect his butt. "You just hang on now until I speak with the sheriff." He hustled to his car radio.
Bell asked, "Doesn't he have a remote to work with? Does he have to go to his car to make a call?"
McWide fingered his own mike attached to an epaulette. "I could make the call for him, but I am always curious about how a real expert works."
The trooper turned to face Clicker. "I expect that you have noticed that I am a full blooded Sioux?"
Bell said, "I expected that you might be."
"Which means that you wish to employ my inherent tracking skills. You know, of course, that we Sioux can track a feather blown across the prairie or a...."
Bell found himself again smiling. "I suspected something like that."
McWide's smile was equally open. "Then you will be a bit shocked to discover that unlike my honored ancestors, I have never tracked anything in my life and that I am quite uncomfortable off pavement."
The Lieutenant was trudging back, so McWide hurried. "Just where does that leave us?"
"It leaves us with my experience which goes back a long way, and all I'll ask of you is to walk where I've walked." Clicker paused. And to keep Gilbert from trampling over everything I might be interested in."
McWide hazarded, "Maybe he isn't coming with us."
"You think Sheriff I. B. Boynton will leave us here alone, maybe to actually find something?"
McWide grunted. "I stand corrected by the obvious."
They climbed from the road in single file. Clicker led and pushed the pace. He glanced occasionally at the sky because the day was moving along, and if anything were to be discovered it would be best found quickly.
Clicker expected to find something. Unless the shooter just punched a bullet skyward while walking, there would be marks of prone or kneeling. Would there be an ejected cartridge? Not if the shooter was a sniper. Anyone with half a brain would pick up his empty. The others might suspect an accident, but Clicker was searching for a deliberate killer.
The task was not as daunting as it had appeared. With thick tree cover, fields of fire were few, and only a few of those open lanes pointed to the lodge and the low stone wall protecting it.
The lowest half of the slope was eliminated
because the stone wall or someone standing on it could not be seen, and the highest elevations were equally incorrect as the bullet would have angled downward in its penetration.
Not straight across, maybe fifty feet below the wall's elevation, Bell thought. The bullet would have to be still rising or have barely leveled off to have gone virtually straight through the Colonel's chest.
Struggling to regain his breath, Gilbert stared across an open lane Bell was examining. "I would shoot from higher up where I could sight straight across. Shooting up or down hill is more difficult."
Still looking, Clicker said, "Yep."
McWide asked, "Are you a long range shooter, Lieutenant?"
"I shoot deer at some pretty long ranges."
"Clicker explained a few things to me while you were holding well back." McWide jabbed the Lieutenant's inability to keep up.
"The hill flattens sharply from here on up, and the range increases dramatically.
"From here, Clicker estimates the shot to be about eight hundred yards. From only a little higher it goes over one thousand yards and that is a long, long distance."
Gilbert was again disdainful. "It is all a waste of time, anyway. No one shot deliberately. Colonel Maynard was wounded accidentally. It happens all the time. You know that, Trooper McWide."
Clicker searched on, and McWide held Gilbert in conversation so that he would be undisturbed.
When he discovered something, Bell studied his find for a long time before signaling to his companions. He stopped them two yards short of his evidence.
"Now, if you get down low you will see that you have a line of sight across to the lodge. You can't see into the grounds, but the wall is clear as can be."
Both men saw, but only Gilbert responded. "We have already looked at a dozen spots like this one."
"Yep, but none of the others had a wooden tripod laying in it"
McWide exclaimed, "Damn!" Sure enough, there were three small sticks tied into a tripod tipped over, but laying further in.
Bell was not finished. "You can see where the legs of a spotting scope were placed. See them there?" They saw.
"Here are toe marks where two men lay and watched.
"And right there, sort of under those leaves, is a cartridge case. Empty, I assume."
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