Roped (Gail McCarthy Mysteries)

by Laura Crum

  I ran my eyes over the empty gold hills, looking for cattle. None in sight. I could hear quail in the brush. A little breeze rippled the grass, brushing it backward with a flash of silver. The sky was an even, hot, cloudless blue. And suddenly, without warning, I felt an intense longing for Lonny.

  Normally I would have called him, we'd have come up together with our own horses, he'd be riding next to me now on Burt. Lonny would like nothing better than to help Glen gather cattle on a sunny morning. We would smile at each other, sharing our pleasure in the horses, the empty hills, the day.

  Pain, like a rush of blood, poured through me. Maybe Lonny had spent the night with Sara. Maybe Lonny and I were over.

  I tried to shut my mind to the feelings. Looked down at Chester, felt of his smooth walk, brushed a strand of his black mane back on the right side of his neck.

  I wanted to go back in time. Less than six months ago, Lonny and I had been solidly together, had been happy. Now everything had changed. I wanted to break the unreasonable law that had dragged me to the present state of affairs. I wanted it to be last year again, when Sara lived with her doctor and Lonny still loved me.

  Lonny, Lonny, Lonny. Chester's hooves seemed to tap it out. Lisa and Glen and Tim rode in silence. Except for the occasional circling hawk above, we were the only living things in sight. The quiet seemed to stretch out, reaching up to the sky. The hooves clopped softly in the dirt; saddles squeaked; bits and spurs jingled. Chester snorted softly.

  Slowly Lonny seeped back out of my mind. For right now it was these empty hills, these horses, this last remnant of the Old West. I reached down to pat Chester's neck. I'd be OK, I told myself. I'd be OK.

  We rode down a gully. The road made a turn and there was an old concrete water trough with some thirty steers around it. The cattle stared at us, heads raised in mild alarm. They were Brahma-cross cattle, leggy, with long ears and an alert, wild look, different in some essential, basic way from the quiet, short-legged, round-headed Herefords and black baldies Glen had kept when I was young. These cattle had, in their dark eyes, some of the force and power of wild animals. We stood there quietly, watching them.

  "They look pretty good," I said to Glen.

  He nodded. "These crossbred cattle do well in this country."

  Lisa's blue dog trotted up to the water trough, put his front paws on the rim, and jumped in. It was a deep trough, and he disappeared completely, with a splash. It didn't seem to disconcert him. His head bobbed up, wet and sleek as a seal, and he swam around a minute before putting his paws on the edge and dragging himself ungracefully out. He shook the water from his coat happily, as the cattle watched him with suspicion.

  "They're sixty steers in this field," Glen said. "About half of them are here. I think the rest will be up this canyon." He waved an arm off to the right. "Tim and I will go up there. Lisa, why don't you and Gail ride up to the back side in case there're a few at the water hole. We'll pick this group up on the way back."

  "OK." Lisa turned her mare and I followed. The two dogs went with us.

  We rode along the side of the gully for a while. I peered into the shadows under the oak trees, looking for the shapes or the movement of cattle. I didn't see anything.

  The gully began to peter out. It headed more and more steeply uphill, got shallower and shallower. In places it was little more than a ditch. There were no more trees. The sun beat relentlessly down. Chester's neck was wet with sweat; the dogs trotted in our shadows, tongues hanging out, panting steadily. If I remembered right, we were nearing the back of the pasture.

  We rode up a short, steep rise, Chester scrambling a little, and stood on the rim of a small basin. Ten steers were gathered around the pond in the bottom. It was just a hollow right near the ridgeline, bare and treeless. I could see the back fence of the pasture on the ridge beyond.

  Lisa and I stared down at the steers. They stared up at us, looking ready to run at the slightest encouragement.

  "This is all that we'll find back here," Lisa said softly. "If they're not at this water hole, they won't be up here."

  "So, what do you want to do?"

  "Sneak around 'em. Get 'em headed downhill. At a walk, if we can. They'll follow the gully back to where we saw the other cattle. The main problem is not letting any get off in the brush. These Brahma cattle are pretty wiley. We need to keep them in sight."

  Lisa turned her mare and began to walk quietly around the basin, meaning to ease the cattle off in the direction we had come from. I followed her, keeping my head turned away from the cattle, as if I weren't interested in them. Eye contact alone can start a spooky steer into a run.

  I'd only taken a few steps when I saw two small blurred streaks out of the comer of my eye. I jerked my head around in time to see Joey and Rita barrel into the middle of the steers, full tilt, snapping at heels and noses indiscriminately. There was a second of confused dust and motion, a bawl from a startled steer, and then the cattle vanished over the rim of the hollow, heads and tails up, going downhill at a dead run.

  "Dammit!" Lisa yelled at the top of her voice. She also yelled, "Come back here!," but she didn't waste any time waiting for the dogs to obey. She yelled as she started Rosie down the hill at a gallop, following the cloud of dust that was the cattle. I gave Chester his head and clucked to him.

  Hills and sky seemed to blend in a rushing blur. Chester scrambled beneath me on the steep ground, clever as a cat, keeping his footing easily, even while running downhill. I tried to stay balanced and in the middle of him, my weight back, focusing on guiding him around rocks, holes, and major obstacles. I let him take care of the minor ones.

  I could see Lisa and the cattle ahead of us. Hot wind whipped my face as I felt the horse grunting, the sudden shift and roll of his body. Going hard in a flat place, keeping the cattle in sight, checking down for a steep spot, a sliding, slithering trot, then back at the run where the ground leveled out. I felt drunk on the wind and the rhythm of the chase. If Chester went down and killed me now, I wouldn't care. I clucked to him and leaned forward and felt him stretch out a little harder.

  It had taken us half an hour to ride up the gully; it took us about ten minutes to come back down it. Chester was gasping for air as we neared the water trough. Even the long-legged Brahma steers were loping, rather than running, looking for a place to stop. The dogs loped behind them, tongues almost touching the ground.

  "Joey, Rita, come here," Lisa ordered, pulling her mare up.

  They looked over their shoulders, appeared to consider the matter, and then trotted wearily back in our direction. They sat down next to Lisa's horse and looked up at her. "Good dogs," she said.

  The cattle broke into a walk immediately. We trailed after them in a leisurely fashion until they met up with the group around the water trough. They all milled a little, but they looked like they were planning to stay put. Tim and Glen weren't around. Lisa and I parked our horses under a shade tree. I patted Chester's wet neck. "You're a good boy," I told him. "I'll ride you on a gather any old day."

  Five minutes later, Glen appeared, pushing another twenty or so steers. Glen counted heads and announced we had everything. We began trailing them down the dirt road toward the corrals.

  "Where's Tim?" I asked.

  "He went on home," Glen said. "Said he wasn't feeling well."

  I could guess why.

  Lisa gave me a crooked smile. "A little dusty, huh?" She seemed relaxed and happy, despite the cloud of dirt that was billowing around us, filling our eyes and noses and coating our hair.

  We got the cattle in the corral without any trouble. They were tired. Both Joey and Rita jumped in the water trough and swam around. I unsaddled Chester. Glen got beers out of the refrigerator in the bam and passed them around. I took a long, cold swallow. Nothing, I thought, tasted better than ice-cold beer when you were hot and tired and dusty.

  I had Chester hosed and scraped and was almost done with my beer when Lisa came running around the comer of the bam, her eye
s wide and frantic. "The colt!" she almost screamed. "The colt!"

  Her fear seemed unmanageable, her eyes blank with terror.

  "What's wrong?" I demanded.

  Lisa's voice was shaking. "The colt's dead," she said. "Someone cut his throat."

  TWELVE

  The foal lay on the ground, flat on his side, a few feet from the wall of the bam. From a distance he appeared merely asleep. But the old mare stood over him, nosing him and nickering anxiously. Clenching my jaw, I approached his carcass.

  There was a small pool of blood on the ground next to him; most of it had already soaked into the dust, leaving only a dark stain. Flies buzzed greedily over what was left. I stared at the jagged tear in his neck, then bent down and examined it closely.

  After a minute I stood and met Glen's eyes. "He bled to death," I said evenly. "His jugular vein is torn open."

  I stared down at the little corpse, which only a few hours ago had been a living baby horse-a minor miracle. Now he was dead. An accident?

  As if reading my mind, Glen said, "He must have gotten cut on a nail or something." Turning, he began to examine the bam wall nearest to where the colt lay. In a minute he pointed at a large nail that was sticking out of a split board. "Like this," he said. "Goddamn old buildings."

  I walked over and looked at the nail. Maybe, I thought, maybe. I'd seen horses hurt themselves this badly on sticks and broken boards and the insignificant-looking prongs of barbed wire. Only last week I'd been called out to treat a mare who had bled to death before I'd gotten there; she'd caught her foot in a barbed-wire fence and ripped an artery wide open.

  Glen's voice brought me to myself. "Poor little guy," he said sadly. "I guess I better go get the tractor. It won't take much of a hole to bury him."

  Lisa stood ten steps away, not looking at the colt, hugging herself with both arms. "This wasn't an accident," she said dully. "Somebody killed that colt."

  Glen just shook his head. "I'll go get the tractor." He turned and walked away.

  Lisa grabbed my arm. "Come on. I need to get out of here."

  Without asking, she climbed into her father's truck; the two dogs jumped into the bed behind us. I stared out the passenger window at the double-wide mobile home that sat between the roping arena and the ranch entrance. Al Borba's residence. The curtains were all drawn closed. No way to know who was inside. But there was a brown pickup and a red Trans Am in the driveway.

  To my surprise, Lisa drove out the ranch entrance rather than up the hill toward her house. "I'll buy you lunch," she said, feeling my eyes on her.

  In another minute we were parked in front of the Saddlerack. I noted that I could see the roping arena from here and parts of the barnyard, though the field where the dead foal lay was hidden behind the barn. A person could easily have watched us saddling horses and departing to gather from this spot.

  I followed Lisa into the cool, dim interior of the empty bar, and we sat down at the round table in the corner. A man was tending bar today-an older man with a battered face and a heavy, big-boned frame.

  "Where's Janey?" I asked Lisa.

  "She doesn't work Sundays," Lisa said absently. "Len does."

  That brought another question to mind. "How come Al didn't help us gather this morning?"

  "He doesn't work Sundays, either."

  So Al, and for that matter Janey, had been free all morning. Free to kill colts, if that happened to be their inclination.

  Lisa got up and ordered beer and hamburgers from the bartender. She brought the beer back to our table. "Len'll bring the hamburgers out here," she said.

  I took a long swallow of beer, feeling as though I were washing the taste of blood out of my mouth.

  "So, what do you think, Gail?" Lisa demanded.

  "I think you're right. I think there've been too many accidents."

  "You think someone killed that colt?"

  "It's possible," I said slowly. "That wound could have been made by a knife. And there wasn't any blood on the nail Glen showed me. But we can't prove it. And why would anybody kill that baby?"

  "Because he belonged to Dad," Lisa retorted. "Because Dad was proud of him. There's no other reason."

  "That's scary."

  "I know it's scary. That's what I've been telling you. Gail, we've got to figure out who's doing these things."

  "I tend to agree with you. I just don't know how to do it. I can hardly ask your friend the bartender if he noticed anybody driving into the ranch this morning. That would start just the sort of talk Glen wants to avoid."

  "I know," Lisa agreed miserably. "But I don't care anymore who talks about what. I just want to catch the bastard who's doing this. That poor little foal." Lisa sounded ready to burst into tears.

  "How could anybody do that?" I said, mostly to myself. "Of course, it could have been an accident. It was an irregular tear, not a nice neat cut." What I was thinking but didn't say was that I wished like hell Tim hadn't gone home ahead of us. Roany had been in her pen when we got to the bam. Had Tim put her up and left, never noticing that the foal was dead? It was more than possible. To a casual glance, the foal would have looked asleep, sacked out on his side. Foals often slept that way.

  Or had someone killed the foal in the window of time between Tim's return to the bam and our own? It seemed unlikely. Or, worst-case scenario, had Tim killed the foal? He was the one person known to have been there at the right time. But these weren't things I wanted to say to Lisa. The thought of Tim cutting the foal's throat was so bizarre as to be terrifying.

  The bartender brought our hamburgers, and both of us dug in. Despite the tragedy of the foal and my worries about Lonny, I found I was ravenous. Riding a horse all morning will do that for you. Lisa and I finished the burgers, and Lisa reached for the check and stuck a hand in the pocket of her jeans. "Damn," she said and got up from the table. "Dad'll have some money in the truck."

  "I'll get it," I offered. "No, you helped us this morning. We're buying your lunch. I'll be right back."

  Lisa disappeared out the door, and I took a last, long swallow of beer. What now? I asked myself. Call the cops, my mind answered. To hell with the talk. This is dangerous stuff. Someone really hates Glen.

  But what could the cops do? No one had been hurt or killed. No people, anyway. Cops weren't interested in dead horses. Particularly when we couldn't prove that the deaths hadn't all been accidents.

  Call a private detective? I was trying to decide if this was a possibility when all hell broke loose outside the bar. Dogs barking and snarling, a man yelling, and Lisa's voice raised in alarm. I almost tipped the table over in my rush out the door.

  It took me a minute to sort out the scene in the parking lot, which looked like a small-scale war. Lisa was standing by the pickup. In front of her, yelling and cussing, was a tall, dark man in a cowboy hat. It was Sonny, all right. But he wasn't yelling at Lisa. Dive-bombing him, barking and snarling, were the two Queenslands. They were making so much noise they were drowning Sonny out, and he was shouting at the top of his lungs. Judging by the expression on his face, some of the strikes were connecting.

  I came to a dead stop. The bartender almost ran into my backside; he'd come charging out of the bar right on my heels. He looked at me, a wide grin spreading across his face. I could feel a similar smile breaking out on my own. The sight of Sonny Santos being attacked by his own dogs was pretty funny.

  Sonny was losing the battle. He would aim a savage kick at one dog and, as it would duck out of the way, the other dog would come in and bite him. Most of the bites were landing on his calves; the dogs seemed smart enough to grab over the tops of his cowboy boots. Once in a while one of his kicks would land firmly and a dog would yelp, but they weren't quitting. Queenslands aren't bred to quit. They snarled and dove back in on him.

  Between the dust and noise and commotion, Sonny didn't even notice Len and me. It only took a minute before he realized the dogs wouldn't quit and Lisa wasn't going to call them off. He struggled back t
o his pickup, fighting a rearguard action. Even so, he got bitten a few more times. His cussing was getting angrier and more obscene, but there wasn't much he could do. He managed to get in the pickup and shut the door.

  Lisa was standing next to me by this time. She called the dogs to her and looked at me with sudden fear in her eyes. "What if he has a gun?"

  I'd wondered that myself. Lisa had the Queenslands by their collars, keeping them next to her. I watched Sonny carefully to see what he'd do next.

  The bartender watched him with a wide grin. I had a sense Len was hoping for trouble. After a minute, I was pretty sure Sonny didn't have a gun. The anger on his face was murderous. If he'd had a gun, he would have produced it. He leaned his head out the window. All his rage was focused on Lisa, who stood next to me, holding the dogs.

  "You little bitch," he yelled. "I'm not done with you yet!"

  To my surprise, Lisa yelled back. "Knock it off, Sonny. I'm done with you. And if you ever set foot on the ranch I'm calling the cops!"

  Sonny looked mad enough to burst a blood vessel. All his cool arrogance had vanished in the heat of battling his own dogs. His face was flushed and red.

  "You'll be sorry, you bitch," he shouted. Then he threw the truck into gear and accelerated out of the parking lot in a cloud of dust, barely missing Glen's pickup.

  Lisa gave me an intense look. "We better get back to the ranch. Who knows what he'll do?"

  "All right," I agreed.

  Lisa paid Len for our lunches, ignoring his amused smile, and we headed back toward her place. I kept my eyes open as we drove in. Al's mobile home was still quiet and shuttered; the same two vehicles were parked beside it. A green tractor sat next to the barn where it hadn't been before, but Glen was nowhere in sight. Tim's truck and Joyce's Cadillac sat in the driveway of the big house. I didn't see any unexpected visitors or any cars or trucks that didn't belong. In front of Lisa's house was just my own truck with the veterinary cabinets on the back-friendly and familiar.