by Sue Hardesty
He back waved her off as he turned toward his house.
Angry and frustrated, Loni got into the truck and waited for Bahb and Willie to climb in beside her. "He shouldn't get away with that!"
"He do bad. But I never knew man who try harder."
"Not that I ever saw," Loni countered.
"He work hard for his lord and he thought on his investments."
"What does that mean?"
"Years back he buy motel and new freeway bypass it. Remember? He buy laying hens and virus kill them. He buy Shetland ponies. They so mean, kids no near them. He buy cotton farm, but price fall out bottom. Cheaper from India. His wife die. He sick, broken man. Leave him be."
"I know one way he was successful. He gave the church a new member every year," Loni said wryly.
"Yi." Willie nodded. "Wonder he know what cause that?"
"Bet his wife didn't." Loni snickered. Feeling disapproval from her grandpa, Loni couldn't quit. "Shit, Bahb! His kind would have scalped you a hundred years ago."
Bahb lifted his hat. "Still have it." He had a broad grin as he sat his hat back on his head.
Giving up, Loni drove Bahb and Willie back to the ranch. They were all silent. Loni wondered what went on in their minds during those long, quiet rides across the desert, what pictures were in their heads. She couldn't even imagine how they had grown up.
* * *
At least today's Thursday, she reminded herself. Not all is lost. The truck should bring something else for her to think about. The dishwasher and hot water heater were due.
Three trucks blocked her way when she got to the ranch, and Ralph was pulling big boxes out of the back of one of them. Speed had already taken out three of the old canvas covered screen windows and was slowly working on a fourth. She wasn't sure about the third truck that idled in the middle of the road.
As Loni left her truck out under the salt cedars, she heard whining through the screen door. She hurried to the house and let Coco out, hugging her squirming body. Thinking about the poor, beaten dog at the Miller's ranch, Loni could imagine Maria's angry face. She would insist they take the dog and find it a good home. Even when Loni reminded her the animal belonged to someone else, Maria would bulldoze her way in until the owner gave up the animal or she charged them with cruelty.
After one last hug, Loni let go and walked into the kitchen behind Willie and her grandpa to face her grandma, but all she got was Shiichoo's famous skinny look before Loni escaped for home.
* * *
Unable to sleep from the racket Daniel was making down below, Loni opened her computer.
FROM: Loni Wagner
TO: [email protected]
DATE: July 15
SUBJECT: Still here
I'm still listing the reasons I don't ranch.
Reason #5: Cattle rustling again. Although Bahb is still missing some yearlings, I'm glad we found the others. That loss would devastate him. More than money, it's losing old friends. I am always amazed at the total love my Indian grandparents have for all children and animals. Wish I could say the same for most of the whites I know.
Not much going on with the case. It's as though everybody's being sent to the wrong place at the wrong time on the wrong day. I don't want to believe that Carl is deliberately misleading everyone, but I also don't understand how anyone could misread the leads so badly. Funny about that! Seems I've gone full circle.
Loni
Closing her laptop, Loni rummaged around in a kitchen drawer for the sack of drugs Lola gave her. Watching Coco sniff the drugs one at a time, she smiled at a story Bacon had told her about a campout he came across last winter.
One of campers, the principal of a high school from a neighboring town, had dug up plants and left them in a pile, and Bacon told him that he could arrest him for digging them up. Bacon started laughing as he recalled how the principal said he was moving them because he didn't want to kill them where he parked. Bacon laughed even harder when the principal told him he was going to replant them. "What really gets me," Bacon told Loni, "is how very ignorant our educators are. He didn't even recognize peyote."
Loni thought about the coach and his wife as she left Coco in the loft and wandered the hangar to hide the drugs. Strange the way Chief quietly shipped them back to Fresno to family for burial. In fact, when she thought about it, everything was too quiet. It's as though the task force was being shut out, accomplishing nothing. Who was calling the shots? State? Feds? Chief?
Loni let Coco out. "Hunt, Coco."
Daniel watched her follow Coco around. "Never saw a grown person play hide-and-seek."
"Oh, shut up, Daniel. Go back to your toys."
It took Coco longer than it should, but then it was the first time Loni had trained Coco on her own. She was learning to do a lot of things on her own.
CHAPTER 16
July 16, 2:00 a.m.
THE NIGHT SPILLED dark liquid all over the landscape, and Loni couldn't see her hand in front of her face as she sat in her parked SUV. Determined to find illegals before they got into worse trouble, she inched along, snaking the light from the spotlights strung across the top of the SUV as she searched the indistinct trails. She knew they would rather die than go back to the brutal life across the border. Accepting futility, Loni turned around and started back onto the highway.
A waving figure popped up in her lights on the side of the road. Behind the person, a truck tilted off the road on its side. Staying behind her open door, Loni stepped out as she spoke into a bullhorn. "Come on out with your hands up." Nothing moved. Well, shit. She could feel someone else out there. "Come out now!" Nothing.
Loni leaned down and signaled Coco. "Hunt, Coco," she said quietly. The dog crouched and moved into the night. "You speak English?" Loni asked the child standing in the headlights.
"Little." Huddled in her serape, the girl shivered in spite of the heat.
"Anyone with you?" Loni stayed out of the light, hoping to hide from any shooter stirring in the dark.
The girl darted a look toward the truck but didn't answer.
"Walk to me." Loni watched the girl's cautious approach. She pulled her out of the headlights and turned her around, searching her. Nothing. She helped the girl into the back of the SUV and quietly closed the door, locking her in.
Coco had been gone too long. "Hey! If you're out there, don't run. You'll just go to jail thirsty and tired." Loni smiled as she heard Coco's attacking growl.
“Consique un descuento de me!" The man's screaming voice mixed with Coco's low, vicious snarl. A Mexican man materialized out of the darkness, swinging and dragging an angry dog clamped on his hand. "Consique un descuento de me!" he screamed again in fear.
"Coco! Release!" Loni ordered. Coco let go but didn't move as she continued her low snarls, sounding like a hacking, spitting man in a dust storm.
The man held onto his wrist. "¿Habla Espanol?" The man pointed at his wrist and then his knee. "Necesito un médico."
"Hospital?"
"Si. ¿Habla Espanol?"
"No habla." Loni answered, searching him for weapons. Young, she thought, surprised. clean shaven with new suit and tie, good haircut, nice looking. Unusual for traffickers or coyotes. Must be a drug runner, she decided. Maria had taught her not to use the word wetback. She could feel his muscles tighten as she ran her hands over him, pulling a switchblade and cell phone out of a front pants pocket.
Chui's number was on fast dial. Well, shit. How bad is this? Another illegal with Chui's number. Noticing him staring at her, she shrugged and dropped the phone in her pocket, pretending indifference. As the young man climbed into the backseat, the child began to sob.
"Ca'llati!" the man threatened. "Voy a golpearte."
Hit her, Loni thought, and it'll be the last time.
"No pasta, no agua," she whimpered to the Mexican man, "lo dejó morir a mis hermanas."
The sonofabitch, Loni sputtered to herself. He left her sisters and a baby out there with no food or water. They would die. She
knew a coyote wouldn't give her any information, but maybe the girl would.
"A sus hijos a hacer mucho ruido," he spat back.
The baby made too much noise? Loni decided she had another no good coyote bastard. Treating others worse than cattle, taking their money, dumping them with nothing, nowhere to go. Or worse! Maybe use the girl in the slave trade. Loni stomped on the gas pedal and sped to the clinic, dragging the young man in through the door. She left him handcuffed to a bed rail.
Walking out of the clinic, Loni pulled the phone out of her pocket and tapped out Chui's number. "My man, you need to keep better track of your coyotes. Got one here in a spot of trouble." Loni listened to a string of expletives from Chui and hung up on him.
She unlocked the SUV door and helped the child out, motioning her to follow Loni to the lounge vending machines. "Lo que te gusta?"
"Me gustaría que y que." She picked a Coke and a peanut butter cup with a big grin on her face. "Gracias."
Feeding bills into the machine and pushing buttons, Loni handed the candy and coke to the girl trying to calm her down. "Sentarse," she answered the child. "Su nombre?"
"Maya." She gulped through her sobs.
"Your name is Maya. Pretty name." Loni wondered how much English she actually knew.
"My mama's name. She die birthing me."
"Pretty dress. Did you make it?" Loni asked encouragingly.
"No. My aunt."
"Your English is very good."
"I work for priest. He taught me. He die so I come north with my two sisters." Holding on tightly to her candy, Maya kept crying.
"Can you tell me why he left your sisters?" Loni asked encouragingly.
"He took money. Afraid baby would get him caught, so he left them. Other sister angry so he threw her out too. He like me." Maya wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
"Tell me where your sisters are and I'll go get them."
"True?"
"Yes."
Loni slowly coaxed a description of where the two women and babies had been left. "You can see windmill from road," she said. "Way in distance. He left them yesterday."
Loni knew the only windmill visible from Old Highway 85 was "The Well That Minnie Dug." Loni loved that name. She had often wondered who Minnie was.
Quickly settling the coyote and the girl in two separate cells, Loni told Bobby, "Send a tow for the pickup. Tell Gary to search it for drugs first thing."
"Not just a coyote?"
"Maybe. Didn't seem to care about his passengers. Maybe child predator. Only two women and a child. He dumped them and kept a young girl. Kept the money."
"Got it," Bobby answered.
"One more thing. I know where the coyote left the women. I'm going back to find them."
"Call Border Patrol to do it."
"You know they won't go until tomorrow. They'll be dead by then."
"Chief won't like it," Bobby warned her.
"What? No, I can't hear you!" Loni walked out, knowing Chief would make her pay for it with another stupid job. Or no job. She could only hope.
Loni turned off the highway at Milepost 46 and drove two miles on an old worn out, potholed, dusty desert road toward "The Well That Minnie Dug." She had to laugh at Coco as she squinted at Loni in disgust and lay down, anchoring herself between Loni and the door to keep from tumbling to the floor.
Loni drove into the corral surrounding the tank and shined her spotlights all around. The gate and most of the wire around the corral were gone, and the windmill fan spun slowly in the slight breeze, pushed by its fat kite tail. The blades weren't turning. That meant no water. She had heard no one took care of this tank anymore, but it meant death for the illegals.
She got out, calling the sisters by the names the girl gave her. A weak voice replied from behind the tank. Loni shined her light down at a dead baby. "Ayudame por favor," a young girl begged. She sat against a mesquite tree, rocking her sick sister who was moaning and sweating heavily. Heat stroke!
"Habla usted Ingles?"
"No," the girl answered.
Loni ran back to the SUV and grabbed a water bottle, the cup top off Coco's water jug, and a first aid kit. Pulling a small box of salt from her kit, she shook it into the cup and poured water in, stirring with her finger. She handed the rest of the bottle to the sitting girl and then held the cup up to her sick sister's mouth. After the sick woman took a few swallows, Loni picked up the baby. Carefully wrapping the dead child in an old, clean horse blanket, she gently placed her in the backseat of the SUV.
Calling for an ambulance to meet her at Milepost 46, Loni hurried back to the sisters and carried the sick woman to the SUV. Her sister climbed in and held her.
"De donde es usted?" Loni asked.
The girl ignoring the question. "Hospital?"
No one seems to want to tell me where they came from, Loni thought, probably because they don't want to go back. "Pronto," she answered as she drove to the highway where paramedics waited to take them to the clinic.
Loni watched the flashing lights shrink into the dark night until they disappeared.
* * *
Back on Old Highway 85, she saw light push over the horizon and outline Saddle Peak. At Harper Road, she made a quick decision and flipped onto the dirt road to search the travel trailer site.
It had been a long time since she last traveled this washboard road. Her jaws were soon sore from clenching against the slam, slam, slam, of the uneven ruts. Dust sifting in through the open windows coated her face and everything else in the SUV. Between coughs, she spit out the dust, but it blew back on her. In between sneezes, Coco crawled out of the floorboard back onto the seat only to get flung right back down again. Even slowing down didn't help. She rolled up the windows, not knowing which was worse, suffocating from dirt or heat.
On her left, Carl's fence separated his ranch from Bahb's. The rarely graded country road wasn't mended until flash floods washed it out. Ahead, a locked gate was posted with "NO TRESPASSING" and "NO HUNTING" signs. "What the —?" she muttered to Coco. "Where did that gate come from?"
Driving on, she saw other metal signs anchored to the fence. What's with that? After seven more miles of brutal driving, she arrived at the dead end where Carl said the trailer had camped. Ten days ago?
She stopped under an ironwood tree and let Coco out to help her search. When they didn't find anything, not even human trash, for a quarter of a mile, she turned back. A black Hummer drove out of another gate and pulled up beside her. She felt the cold air pushing out at her when she walked up to the open window. "Well, Robert Teag. How's your wife? Did she like your package?"
"You're trespassing," he said. "I have to ask you to move on."
Loni smiled and shook her head. "This is a county road, Robert. That means anybody can travel it." Loni pointed to the distant hill. "This side of the road you and I are on? Belongs to my granddad's ranch. Guess that means if anybody's trespassing, it would be you."
"What are you doing here?"
"I'm standing on my own land, and you ask me what I'm doing here? You're kidding, right?"
Teag stared at her impassively.
What the hell. "Looking for a travel trailer someone said was camping here," she answered.
"Not here," Robert assured her. "I've got surveillance on this road, and I can tell you no trailer's been around here."
"You part of Carl Harper's renters?"
Robert nodded. "Security."
"Security for what?"
"Plants."
"What kind of plants. Rare plants?"
Robert shrugged. "You have to ask the boss."
"Do you fly them out of here?"
"Sometimes."
"You have a runway?" Loni watched Robert's face close down as he rolled up the window. The Hummer turned around and sped back to the gate. Robert punched in three numbers, and the gate quietly slid open. The Hummer drove through and disappeared over the hill in a cloud of hot dust as the gate slid shut.
"
Let's go," she told Coco, walking back to the SUV. She got both of them a drink of water before pouring some on her kerchief. Sitting in her SUV, she stared in the rearview mirror at the smeared mess of sweat and dirt on her face and fought anger and disappointment. Carl had lied to her about the camp trailer, lied about drugs on the illegals. What next? If she couldn't trust him, who could she trust? Mourning the loss of an old friend, she wanted to quit and go back to LA until she remembered Maria wasn't there anymore.