by Lisa Preston
Sure enough, with more height, we spied Stuckey in the bottomland far to the east, counting sheep amid the oaks. Gabe checked cross fencing and I noted the coyote scat on a scrubby knoll overlooking the field where the ewes had apparently bedded down the previous evening.
Gabe reined up and studied the coyote tracks with Charley and me.
“Varmints need bullets in their heads,” Gabe said.
“Is it legal here to kill them outright when they’re not bothering you or any stock?”
“Ever heard of the three Ss?”
Actually, I had. “Shoot, shovel, and shut up.”
He grinned. “That’s right.”
“Should we go up the hill all the way?” I remembered now what he’d said about the summit having cell reception and wished I’d thought to grab mine out of Ol’ Blue. I could have called Guy’s cell.
“No reason to go up there.”
“Wouldn’t it be the best view of the whole place, if we want to see stray sheep?”
“If there’s any stragglers, they’re probably over the low hill to the east. Some of them would have moved that way during the hunt.”
“We could split up,” I suggested. “If I find some, Charley can bring them in, push them down to the others.”
Gabe shrugged. “Reckon you can go wherever you want.”
I broke away from him, cut the bay gelding he’d assigned me straight up the slope, urging him to work.
Climbing that hill—the second time that afternoon—was a sight easier ahorseback than afoot. Decker wasn’t in great shape, but the thrust of his hindquarters lurching us up the slope felt wonderful. Even though Gabe was pretty sure he’d be the one finding sheep, I hoped to score, to be doubly useful to Ivy. In one glance over my shoulder, I glimpsed a lone old cowboy on a small, sturdy horse, descending a ridge way off, across the Beaumont fences, at a neighboring ranch. The horse was tailed by a small, fluffy dog, but when I looked back again, the brush had swallowed up the threesome.
At the summit, my horse Decker got a good rest while I looked in every direction. Amazing how much better the view is from the saddle. A few feet higher makes a difference. I saw more ranch land to the east. Haze to the west and bits of town. Maybe even made out the Black Bluff bull sale grounds. Somewhere in that little town was Ivy’s specialty shop where she sold her supplements for dogs. I heard distant traffic noise and realized good old Interstate 5 was down there at the bottom of the hill’s super steep west side. The north seemed to be a kinder slope but was fenced off.
The bay blew the wonderful noise of contentment that horses make. The honest scent of horse sweat drifted up. I smiled down at Decker’s russet face, then frowned. Below the horse’s black-tipped nose lay Charley, pressing his head to the ground in the same spot he’d been when I found him earlier in the day.
I backed Decker up a stride, then another.
So odd, the way my dog lay, his front legs a little spread, hugging the earth.
“Charley, get up. Come.”
Decker pawed and stamped a front foot while I made him turn on his haunches to let me see Charley from all angles.
Weird.
I had to ride away and bark the command to get Charley’s cooperation. And we didn’t find any sheep as we forced our way down through the rocks, brush and oaks, bushwhacking blind until we could see the houses and arena.
Back at the barn, Gabe loped up on the buckskin and said all was cool, the sheep were all accounted for in the low part where he’d expected. I was still glad to have had the ride and been a little use to Ivy. I set to work untacking, got my bay taken care of faster and better than Gabe did the horse he rode.
Gabe kept walking out the barn aisle and peering away from the houses, deep into the ranch or down the back road, the way he’d brought me in when he escorted me across the property in the morning. He went for a look-see after he carried his saddle to the rack, when he fetched a bucket of water to sponge our horses down, and once in the middle of brushing his out, banging the bristles absentmindedly on the heel of one hand as he strode the aisle.
Every stall had a nice run-out paddock and there were at least eight stalls on each side of the barn, plus open bays of hay storage before the stalls even started, but there were only four horses at this outfit.
“How long have you worked here?” I asked when Gabe came back and put the buckskin in a stall. “Long enough to remember Charley back when he was called Flame?”
Gabe nodded. And I realized why I’d wanted to ingratiate myself to Ivy.
I wanted to win favor here because I didn’t want this ranch to try taking my dog away from me. How was I going to deal with it if they tried to keep Charley, call him Flame again? I could have cried at the thought. Charley circled me in that way herders can’t help but do. When I stroked his fringed ears, he pressed his throat to my thigh. I wanted to fall on my butt and haul him into my lap. Maybe Ivy was right, I was concussed.
“He sure is loyal to you,” Gabe said.
Shepherds are special. They see you to the end and beyond. I couldn’t keep the hoarseness out of my voice when I asked Gabe, “And what happened to his brother, Fire?”
“Well, honestly, she thinks he was stolen by her old herdsman. Figured he got both dogs.”
“Was that the guy I saw on a flyer on the bulletin board at the bull sale? Vicente Arriaga? He disappeared?” I faced Gabe and almost told him that I’d met the man’s nephew but paused and thought better of it. Things were fuzzy, but the contradictions were waving at the back of my brain. “Just up and moved off one day?”
Gabe looked up, above me. Another man’s voice whispered something behind me, from the back of the barn where I remembered the cinder-block building snugged up. I turned but saw no one there and had caught nary a word. Gabe strode past me and disappeared through a narrow doorway at the back end of the barn.
Curious, I put my horse away and started to follow him but then Ivy appeared at the open end of the barn aisle, her Barbie-doll silhouette reminding me what an eyesore I am in the state of California, where so many women weigh a buck ten or less.
I stood there trying to make sense of things and musing on the good fact of life Gabe had observed when he noted Charley’s loyalty. Then the truth struck me so deep inside I almost choked.
Why hadn’t I seen it before? And what should I do about it? I knelt to stroke the reassuring warmth and softness of my good old Charley.
“I get it now,” I whispered to him.
Nothing had been broken inside Charley’s head when I’d found him at the summit either time today.
It was his heart.
My good dog knew something, I realized. And he’d known for nigh two years.
Charley knew where the body was buried.
And now, so did I.
Chapter 9
IN THE WORST OF WAYS, I wanted to be home. Even if I could get home—though I couldn’t possibly drive all the way back to Cowdry tonight—Guy wouldn’t be there, according to Melinda. But now I was having a hard time keeping my eyes open. I needed to bed down. Where should I park Ol’ Blue to sleep? The Black Bluff sale grounds probably still had people overnighting, but given what had happened to me there this morning, the option wasn’t appealing.
“Gabe? Oscar? Stuckey? Rainy?” Ivy pirouetted where she stood, just outside the barn in the last of the daylight, staring hard. Took me a while to realize that she was having trouble seeing me and Charley in the dark barn aisle.
I came forward and made my tone as friendly as she’d been toward me, which was plenty. “You said there was something you wanted to talk to me about.”
“Oh, Rainy! You were so quiet. What were you doing?”
“Just putting the horse away.”
“I do want to talk to you about something. Where’s Gabe? Did you guys check on Stuckey? Oscar finished his work and is cleaning up at the bunkhouse. We all have dinner together here.”
“Gabe went that way.” I pointed down the dark barn ai
sle.
“Oh, he’s in the smokehouse? Come on.” Ivy sashayed away, Charley and me in her wake.
We ducked through the narrow doorway that Gabe had disappeared in and stood in the cold, cinder-block room that I now realized predated the barn. There was another dark doorway at the back of this little fifteen-foot-square building, but we were obviously in the main room. And this was no smokehouse, no matter what Ivy called it. A truly crappy, dinged-to-pieces old anvil sat on a stump next to the room’s main feature, a cinder-block open-burning forge with a fire bed almost as wide as Ol’ Blue. The old bellows off to the side had brittle, scarred leather. This had once been a true blacksmithing shop.
Ivy lowered her voice. “Now, what I wanted to talk to you about—”
I pointed behind her. “That’s quite a forge.”
Ivy turned and we both studied the old open forge. The hip-high burn bed was within reach, and I ran a finger through its dust. It had been a long time since this forge had seen a load of coal coke. The coke shovel hanging by the bellows was dusty, too.
“Oh,” Ivy exhaled, letting her shoulders drop. “I wasn’t thinking about how you’re a horseshoer. Have you used this kind of forge?”
Precious little, but I had done so. My first internship was with a ranch shoer in Texas, and he’d used an old-fashioned open-fire forge like this. I told Ivy all about it, but I could tell she was only half listening.
“Okay, now, Rainy—”
“And I sure never had a sink right by the forge. That’s real nice.” I stepped to the room’s corner where a laundry-tub-style sink occupied most of a little three-foot counter. A giant pump jug of hand soap, a towel and—of all things to be in a smithy—a microscope under a plastic cover took up the rest of the counter space.
Red wet stains in the sink, rinsed but still there, made me remember Oscar heading to this end of the barn with his grisly cargo on the four-wheeler, back before I’d found Charley. Another sick thought arose.
As Ivy stared with raised eyebrows, I stepped to the other little doorway and confirmed my suspicion.
A dead pig hung in the cinder-block anteroom. The air reeked of blood and death.
Ivy waved toward the sink. “My old herdsman talked me into buying that.”
“Huh?” I turned back to the sink and then realized she was pointing at the microscope.
“He was learning about parasitology, you know, so he could do fecals for us. Do you do that, or do you just worm your horses?”
Deworm, I thought, but didn’t say. How to do a fecal—a count of the number of worm eggs in a sample of horse’s manure—was on my list of things to learn. I’d read up on it some but didn’t exactly have the spare money for a microscope, so hadn’t nailed down the procedure.
“I’ve used those mail-away fecal tests, so I can target the deworming right.” I felt myself redden with being unable to stop myself from fixing her terminology.
“Oh, good.” If Ivy felt slighted over my correction, she didn’t show it. “I’ve learned so much about ranching stuff since I started staying here more, taking more responsibility for things. There’s so much to learn and I just love it. Milt thinks I’ve gone native on him. I’d rather we spent all our time here. I’m so done with LA. Anyway, I encouraged Vicente when he wanted to learn to do fecals. I really want everyone here to feel empowered.”
I imagined how the menfolk on this ranch would roll their eyes, hearing her talk. Of course, they’d heard it plenty more than me. I stiffened as Ivy reached for my arm.
“Listen,” she said, “I want to ask you something and I didn’t want to say in front of a strange man.” Ivy had both of her warm palms on my arm now. “Not that Oscar’s strange. He’s a good man. Sends every dollar back to Jalisco. But, you know what I mean. I didn’t want to put you on the spot when you drove back, but he was there on the four-wheeler, and you’d just found Flame.”
She fondled Charley’s head who took it good-naturedly.
Here it comes, I thought, bracing myself for the fight. She was going to make it plain that she expected Charley to stay here on the ranch now.
Ivy inclined her head with sympathy. “When you were assaulted, did that mean something worse? Do you need to go to the hospital? There’s a special exam that they do for those cases.”
I blinked and shook my head just enough to convey the negative. “Not that kind of assault.”
Ivy sighed with such satisfied relief that I could have teared up at her caring. She narrowed her gaze, looking me up and down. “I was going to offer to call my doctor, but then I thought about the exam thing, and I think it’s got to be done in an official way.”
“I’m okay,” I said.
“Oh, good. I’m so glad to hear it wasn’t worse. It happened to me, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. No woman should be—oh, honey, I do go on, don’t I? Look, I still think you should report what happened to you. You got hit on the head, right? Can I see?” She reached for my hair, and only then did I realize I’d been holding the back of my scalp. “Oh, wow, you’ve got a big lump there. Maybe you should go to the emergency room. Or I can call my doctor. Really, he’d come out here on a weekend, no problem. Do you want me to call him?”
Maybe I did have a concussion. Maybe that would explain a whole lot about feeling so tired and sick to my stomach and even being weepy, which is not like me at all. And now I was super distracted, scared she’d try to keep Charley, plus needing to think about what I’d realized Charley had been telling me.
It would seem so outlandish to say it out loud, I just couldn’t.
Ivy was waiting for a response. I shook my head. “I don’t need a doctor, but thanks for being so nice.”
“We women have to stick together, lift each other up,” Ivy said. She invited me to dinner and, when she heard I was going to push out and find a place to sleep in my truck, she offered me the night in the big house’s spare bedroom.
***
Oscar and Gabe exited the old farmhouse that everybody around here called the bunkhouse just as Ivy and I walked out of the barn. A third fellow in a straw cowboy hat, jeans, and a work shirt, more than good-sized, tucked in behind them, like he was trying to hide himself behind the smaller men.
“I got pulled over on my way out here,” I said, “but the cop didn’t write me a ticket.”
“Ah, they harass us all the time,” Gabe said. “Means nothing. Like my old man always said, be respectful and get out of there, then it’s no trouble.”
My daddy would have said the same, did many a time. He’d been a ranch hand many years and now drives truck, usually on I-10, but is supposed to be hauling up I-5 to get himself to his only child’s wedding this Wednesday.
“Come on, everybody, Zuni stew,” Ivy said.
“Aw, no, the peppers make Stuckey stinky,” Gabe said, grinning himself silly.
“Gabe!” Ivy and the third fellow said together. Then Ivy’s admonishment turned to laughter and she asked Stuckey about the sheep count and if the ewes seemed peaceful, not disturbed by the hunt earlier in the day.
“Yeah, they’re good,” Stuckey said. He looked a few years older than Gabe, but acted younger, acted like the low horse in the herd. “Ain’t seen any coyotes. Jack and Joe are down there.”
I looked over my shoulder from one fellow to the other, counting, remembering names, trying to keep track of the employees Ivy had on the ranch. “Jack and Joe?”
Gabe read my wonder and explained. “Joe’s a john. Jack’s an ass.”
Stuckey honked with laughter that drowned out Ivy’s light tinkle of a half-giggle.
I was confused and asked, “You don’t like Jack?”
“No, no, the guys are being goofy,” Ivy explained. “Jack is our donkey jack. He lives with the sheep. And one time, he bred my best mare, which gave us Joe, who’s four now.”
I said, “My best friend has her heart set on finding just the right mule.”
Oscar removed his baseball cap and tucked it in his waistb
and as we crossed the flagstone and entered the big house. The tall square dining tables had been pushed together to form one long table that was set with big bowls under charger plates, plenty of glasses, and silverware on thick cloth napkins. Ivy took the head of the table and I found myself in the middle of one long side between Gabe and Oscar, across from Stuckey and the chair Eliana would take after she served us. I figured the empty spot at the other end was reserved for Ivy’s man, Milt, even though he wasn’t there. Gabe turned his cowboy hat upside down and slid it under his chair then gave Stuckey a look that resulted in Stuckey properly un-hatting himself.
Ivy passed out white envelopes to the four of them. I could see it was greenbacks, not a check, in the envelopes everybody pocketed. Served, they all gabbed, numerous conversations going at the same time. They were like siblings, these ranch hands, and I found myself smiling, relaxing. My growing-up years were lonelier than they had to be. I was an only kid, and so was Guy. Not until this winter, when Melinda and I became good friends, had I gotten to enjoy having a friend who felt like a sister. Guy’s poker and rugby buddies are starting to feel like an extended family, too. I was happy for these hands on the Beaumont ranch. Gabe and Stuckey and Oscar and Eliana had a good setup. Lots of ranch owners don’t open their homes to the help like Ivy and Milt did.
But as the minutes ticked by, I observed some sketchy vibes. Eliana had served Oscar last, and least. She ignored his nod of thanks though she gave Stuckey and Gabe and Ivy and me big smiles.
And Stuckey couldn’t look me in the eye, while Gabe grew so boisterous, it rang false.
While Gabe talked loudly across the table, joshing Stuckey about being lost all day, I asked Ivy something that I couldn’t get off my mind. “Ivy, about that fellow Vicente …”