by Lisa Preston
Then he remounted the four-wheeler and gunned it straight at me.
Here’s a tip for men who want to bully a woman having a real bad morning: don’t. In this game of chicken, I’d be damned—oops, but not really—if I stepped out of the way of this man and his big loud machine.
He swerved and cut the engine. My ears popped, adjusting to the sudden quiet. I walked on like he didn’t exist, seventy-five yards from Ol’ Blue and happy to be closer to my truck than the stranger was, though he could certainly power up again and beat me to it.
He called out. “Morning, miss. This is private property. I’ve got to have you turn around and leave the ranch now.”
I walked on. Fifty yards to go.
The roar of the four-wheeler coming back to life killed what should have been peacefulness in remote country.
I walked. The four-wheeler pulled up beside me and matched my pace.
“That your truck?”
I nodded painfully, and so we reached Ol’ Blue, where he cut his engine again.
He unclipped a little radio from his belt and held it to his perfect teeth, flashing a smile worthy of a toothpaste ad. “Yeah, I’ve made contact. A girl, by herself. Turning around now. No problem.”
A squelch sounded, then a Spanish-accented male voice came back over the radio. “Okay, got it, thank you.”
Ol’ Blue was dead quiet. Nothing. No rustle, no furry yellow head with little cocked ears. The truck windows were still half open, the way I always leave them when Charley’s in there, so he has ventilation and can get out if the cab gets too warm.
“Charley? Come on, boy.” I turned my body to look and call in all directions.
Then I peered into Ol’ Blue’s locked cab. My ignition key was missing, which meant my house key and the key for the truck topper were also gone. I called for my dog again, tried to ignore my headache, and touched my truck’s hood ornament, a little replica of an anvil Guy glued on especially for me.
Ol’ Blue’s hood wasn’t too toasty, given the heat we were basting in, and California being what it is. The sun even works in the winter here. Diesels stay warm a while. Had it been an hour since I was at the back of the Black Bluff bull sale grounds? Way more? Less?
Like I was just learning to tell time, I studied my watch—ten a.m.—and wondered if that fellow who’d claimed to be helping me could have messed with my watch when I was woozy.
“Ma’am,” Four-Wheeler said, jerking a thumb in the direction I’d come from, “you have to go now. I’m going to escort you to the closest gate, which is that way. Okay, ma’am?”
Ma’am. He was probably a good thirty years old, five years older than me. He folded his arms across his chest. His dog wasn’t missing, and he hadn’t had been hit on the head, and had his truck stolen, too. Yeah, his day had shaped up just fine. Me, not so much.
I opened Ol’ Blue’s topper with dread. “Charley?”
I didn’t really expect him to be there, since I hadn’t heard a rustle inside the bed, but I couldn’t help checking for a silenced dog in the bed of my truck. There was no still body there. Well, that was good news. I studied the bad news, too.
It could have been worse, but it was pretty bad and feeling way worse. My whole shoeing box, the one I set beside the horse every time I’m working, was there and so was my stall jack, but the gate-mouth bag that held my new track nippers—the top-notch model that set me back nearly two hundred dollars—was wide open. I’d definitely left it zipped shut. It held all my backup tools and they were there but the new nippers? Gone. The nail cutters, the crease nail pullers, and two good rasps were missing from their slots in the wood toolbox, the one I set on the ground and rack my working tools on while shoeing. My forge was still on its swing-out arm—the one piece of gear I was least attached to, maybe the sorriest piece of gear I owned. I really need a better forge. I’d have to crawl into the truck to know if my pocket anvil was still there, but I’d seen enough for now.
I whistled for my dog and felt a stabbing pain in my skull. “Charley? Come to me now, buddy. Come on, boy. Charley!”
The four-wheeler cowboy racked a boot heel against his handle-bars. “You lose something, ma’am?”
What started as a favor to get the bull off a friend’s ranch and get me to the famous Black Bluff bull sale had played out in the worst way. I was a long day’s drive from home, missing some of my working tools, on a dusty ranch road in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t know how to get myself home from here. I’d been hit and dumped. Worst thing was, my dog was gone. So, yeah, I’d lost something.
Closing my eyes again, I remembered the sound of Ol’ Blue being driven away as I’d met the grass with my face, as my brain took a lap inside my skull from the whack. The sounds. I remembered hearing Charley in the bed of the truck. He about never goes through the rear slider window and climbs around my tools in the back. But I remembered the clinking sound, his rushing body, the mad scramble that I’d somehow known in a flash was Charley. Had he been trying to get to me? Trying to defend me?
There was no sound now but the light breathing of the man on the four-wheeler. I didn’t know him and didn’t trust him, plain and simple.
Guy, I wish you were here.
I peered into the cab through the driver’s window. My cell phone was still in Ol’ Blue’s open ashtray. Sunglasses hung from the visor.
“You have to go now, ma’am. I mean it.” He sat up straighter on his stupid four-wheeler.
I turned on my feet, but there was no sign of Charley in any direction. “I’m looking for my dog. I kind of woke up over there. I don’t know who moved my truck. But my dog’s gone.” I pointed beyond the ranch, though we couldn’t see the public land from this little hollow.
“Well, you should have kept him on a leash, and you shouldn’t have been on this land in the first place. There’s, like, a hundred signs all around the property edge that tell you—” He looked at me, then away, fidgeting on the four-wheeler. “Aw, don’t cry. Look, it’s okay, it’s just that—”
“I’m not crying!” I wiped the tears away and again turned in place, searching as far as I could see in every direction. “I want my dog. And someone hit me and dumped me out on that road and I just want my dog back. Charley? Charley, come on, boy. Come to me.”
“What do you mean, you got dumped out on the road? You all right?”
Jeez, I’m not a crier, I swear, but the shuddering breath I sucked in was near enough to bawling. “Charley? Charley!”
I tried to think it through. Someone had taken my truck, drove it here, stole stuff from it, and abandoned it. So he didn’t want my truck, it was just a sleazy way to set himself up with some shoeing tools. He must have had another vehicle waiting here, where he’d driven Ol’ Blue. Robbery in broad daylight. Even in my muddled state, I thought it seemed like a lot of trouble for a few tools.
Whoever hit me took quite a chance that he wouldn’t be seen smacking me at the far reaches of the bull sales ground, then taking my truck. He also took a chance that Charley, who’d apparently tried to get himself clear of the thief, wouldn’t bite.
Well, Charley wouldn’t. He might stare or growl to warn people off. Generally, that’s all it takes. Most people aren’t more trouble than that. Charley and I both understand such a situation. I have no quarrel with him not taking his forty-five-pound self to a life-and-death battle over a big chunk of metal. He’ll back off any animal that I’ve sent him to gather, he’ll guard any gate I leave unattended when we’re moving livestock. He collects Guy’s geese, puts them in the shed for us, brings the ducks off the Buckeye pond when Hollis wants to fish. He’s Charley, he’s my friend, he’s great.
How in the world could I leave this place with him lost? How could I drive back to Oregon without him?
Maybe the sound of Ol’ Blue starting up would bring him in. I remembered, then, that my keys were gone from the ignition.
“Charley? Charley!” I cupped my hands and yelled at the hills north and south, down
the dusty road, east and west. I held my breath and listened, wiped my face, and called him some more. I climbed on top of Ol’ Blue’s hood, then cab, and hollered some more, making myself dizzy, hoping my voice would carry farther and I could see farther, far enough to see Charley come loping back to me.
“Ma’am, please come on down from there.” The man swept his hat off and ran a hand through his clumped, dark wavy hair.
“Mister, I want my dog back,” I said, teetering on top of my truck’s cab as I called for Charley.
“I’m Gabe.”
He just got scared, I told myself. Charley skedaddled when the scumbag stopped the truck and started stealing from it. I could picture it in the back of my eyeballs, my little dog scooting from the clangy, crowded truck bed—a place where he never rides anyways. I could picture the nervous eye he’d have given to the unknown man who’d struck me down. Sure, I could understand my dog clearing out. Protecting Ol’ Blue isn’t Charley’s job. He’s my buddy. Yeah, he works, moves stock for me, but I have that dog because I met him at a time in my life when I truly needed—and flat didn’t have—a friend in the world. And he was willing to take the job.
He’s sterling. I so love my Charley dog.
And he loves me, I just know it. I could understand him running off. From his perspective, he’d about been kidnapped. No one ever drives my truck but me. Even Guy doesn’t drive it—though that’s a story for another day—so anyone but me behind the wheel would look pretty far from cricket to my good old dog.
Guy.
I wanted to call my Intended, tell him what had happened. I went to my butt on Ol’ Blue’s cab, slid down the windshield, then fell off the hood, landing in a heap on the dirt like I’d been run over by my own truck.
The man jumped off his four-wheeler and moved to help me up. I hauled myself up by grabbing my truck’s grille, lacing my fingers into the hard metal edges. It hurt.
Four-Wheeler’s expression seemed to grow darker when I staggered to Ol’ Blue’s left hind tire and threw myself to the ground. He didn’t move while I lay on my back and wiggle-crawled, reaching up above my truck’s springs to undo the baling wire that holds my spare key up there. I’d have to pick a new hiding spot for the key. The cowboy was eyeballing me so hard when I wiggled back out from underneath my truck.
“Oh,” he said. “Locked out. You’re all right now?”
I gave one half-nod, made it back to the driver’s door, then threw myself into Ol’ Blue’s cab. The air in there hung hot and stale. I turned the key halfway and waited for the glow plugs to tell me to start the truck.
That’s when I lost it and wept alone in the cab, unable to fire up because I couldn’t leave Charley. The quiet of the truck was the most disturbing thing, far and away worse than missing tools. I switched the key off in the ignition. I wasn’t going anywhere. I shoved the truck door open.
“Charley?” Wrapping my mind around the fact that my Charley dog was really gone was going to make my skull explode. Had he run from the truck? Jumped out when the thief started to unload my tools?
The cowboy-hatted rider of the four-wheeler watched me, looking around this way and that while I checked my little cell phone. Nothing. I held the phone up high but got no bars of service.
On the other side of Ol’ Blue, the reception offered one flickering bar. I’d have to get the truck started, find my way back to a cell connection, maybe to the Black Bluff bull sale grounds, and call the police. The missing shoeing tools, I’d live without. They weren’t missing me, but I knew Charley was. He’s irreplaceable, the one thing I couldn’t go to my insurance company for fixing.
A scared dog can cover some miles, avoiding people. I didn’t want to drive farther away from him. I waved my stupid little cell phone in the air.
“I can’t get a signal.”
“No, that’s why we use the radios on this part of the ranch. There’s one big hill with pretty good service, but that’s the only reliable connection. I can radio to have a call made for you if you need someone to come pick you up.”
“I’m not from around here. I don’t know what road I was on or how I got here. I’m all turned around, and I just want my dog.”
How could I leave this spot where Charley had disappeared? Dropping to my knees, I puked spit and bad air. Waves of nausea kept coming. Sweat beaded off my nose. Palms in the dirt, I retched again, realizing as I wiped my mouth that I was probably streaking dirt all over my face.
“Charley? Come on, buddy. It’s over. That’ll do. Come back to me now. Charley!”
A terrible scream rent the air over the ranch’s next hill, then was cut off by two gunshots.
Chapter 4
FOUR-WHEELER WATCHED ME AND EXHALED. “OKAY, how about this,” he said. “How about I take you to the house. You can use the landline, and there’s easy access to get you on the main road from there. We’ll get you sorted out. Okay?”
So, we were going to act like those screams and gunshots didn’t just happen? I swallowed. “I want my dog back.”
“You can’t stay here. We’ve got a party fanned out over those low hills. They’ll be at it all day unless they score early.”
“Party?”
“Hunting party.”
It was February. “What’s in season?”
“Pigs.”
I didn’t like the idea of Charley being lost in the ranch’s oak woodlands while some city-folks-who-think-they’re-hunters types took potshots. Not that my gold Aussie looks like a wild pig, but there’s people who take what they call sound shots, meaning they fire at sounds in the woods.
“There’s an active hunt going on, and you have to be escorted.”
“A pig hunt?”
“Yes, ma’am. You’re standing in one of the top pig-hunting areas in the entire state of California.”
“Dandy.” I scanned so hard against the horizon for my Charley, my vision blurred.
“Look, are you okay? Can you follow my four-wheeler back to the house? You have to stay with me. Don’t stop. We’ll find your dog later.”
“I don’t want him out here when there’s people shooting.”
“You against hunting? Eating meat?” His jaw stiffened. “People have to be careful when they shoot. They have to be sure of the target and what’s behind it.”
I shook my head, stopped, grabbed my skull with both palms, sickened by the swimmy vision. “I just want to find my dog.”
He fired up his four-wheeler and looked at me over his shoulder. “You stick close, okay? Get in your truck, follow me, and I’ll take you to the house.”
My stomach flipped, and my mouth tasted terrible. There’s toothpaste and a travel brush in my glove box, but I didn’t feel coordinated enough to clean up and drive. I was ready to retch any second anyways. I didn’t like driving away from the place Charley might associate with the truck, assuming he’d been in Ol’ Blue when it was abandoned.
***
The horse was a powerful Appaloosa mare, black with a white hip blanket and a decent mane and tail for an Appy. Picked up a lope on cue and covered the sand arena in jig time. The rider had a lot of long blonde hair with more wave and big curls than she could have come by without a fair bit of styling time this morning. The western shirt and jeans fit tight over her Barbie body. One of the beautiful people and probably knew it. She wore red leather chinks with fringe that must have been over a half-foot long. Every one of those long thin strips of leather lifted in the air and swirled in slow motion up her thighs and around her knees when she reined the horse in.
The four-wheeler angled toward the arena gate and shut off within thirty feet of the white wood rails. We probably hadn’t driven a mile, but the two-track ranch road was so windy and I was so woozy the route was disorienting. Climbing out of Ol’ Blue, I stumbled on a stone and leaned on the front fender. The hard, rocky ground would have been murder to put those posts in, which is why most arenas in this part of Northern California are portable panels, just setting on top of the di
rt.
“She’s doing great, Gabe.”
“Yes, ma’am, I thought you’d be pleased.”
“Picks up either lead with a whisper from my leg.” She swung off the horse and draped the reins over the top rail where her stylish leather and denim jacket hung. One of those women who’s probably old enough to be my mama—mine was barely legal when she had me—but takes attentive care of herself.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She hooked one perfect boot heel on the bottom rail. “And what’s going on here?”
Gabe pointed at me. “This girl was on the property near the perimeter.”
“We have a hunt.”
“That’s why I stopped her. She’s kind of out of it. Says she got turned around and needs to use the phone, needs help to get back to town.”
“Like, needs someone to go with her?” The woman looked at me. “You want someone to go with you? I’ll send Gabe. I can spare him for an hour or so. Actually, that would work out wonderfully.”
He started to raise a hand and shake his head, but the woman was already turning away and didn’t see his protest.
She called over her shoulder, “Gabe, you go with her. Give us a call afterward and Oscar or I will come get you.”
She pulled a Bible-sized brown package from her jacket on the fence and flounced toward Ol’ Blue. I’d left the driver’s door open, I noticed now. Maybe Gabe and I both couldn’t believe it when she put her goodie on Ol’ Blue’s bench seat. “Drop this at the shop for me while you’re in town, okay?”
Gabe set his hat just right and spoke a little loud. “You said Eliana was going to do that.”
“Well, she’s not around or busy or something. I think she’s making dinner.”
He took a step toward the four-wheeler like they all had better things to do. “Stuckey’s not answering the radio. Oscar’s been asking me to check on him.”
Swiveling on my feet, oddly woozy, I looked around and took in the two houses and a barn behind me. I felt like I was wearing out my welcome, though I’d no real notion how long I’d driven to get here and only sort-of noticed the buildings while tailgating the four-wheeler. Tunnel vision isn’t like me except when it comes to studying horses’ feet. I blinked at my surroundings. The farther house was fancy-big, new, with an arched flagstone entrance on the close end, a triple garage on the other. The other house was nearer us, a good sixty yards from the fancy place, right close to the long wooden barn. Probably the original farmstead house. A beat-up green Ford Bronco with out-of-state plates sat near the farmhouse. I watched the houses blur in and out of focus. My right hand went to the back of my skull. It had felt good to get out of Ol’ Blue, I realized, because the big goose egg under my ponytail was tender and had been rubbing on the truck’s headrest.