Forging Fire

by Lisa Preston

  “Oh, Vicente. He was terrific. He was Basque. He minded the flock, moved them as needed. Checked fences. Kept the brush down where it could provide cover for coyotes. Never got drunk. Never. He was lovely. I really miss him.” Ivy gave a shrug. “He just moved on one day. That’s how it can be with ranch hands. Maybe he got a letter from home, maybe he decided to see more of the country. Maybe our summers had gotten too hot for him. It happened back when I wasn’t at the ranch much, so I’m a little fuzzy on when he and Flame left. And he took Fire when he left. I had to make peace with the loss. But I still don’t get how you came to have Flame. Tell us all about that!”

  The others fell silent. I had nothing to hide, so explained how I’d found him hungry and looking for company two years back when I’d been on my way to Oregon for the first time, hunting down my childhood horse. That was a life-changing effort that led me to my new hometown and love. I told her that in a matter of days, Guy and I would be married, and that pretty well brought the house down with wide-eyed hollers of congratulations.

  “Thanks,” I said, turning back to Ivy. “So, you don’t know how Charley or Flame and Vicente—”

  Ivy waved me off. “I used to get here about once a month and then I started coming every weekend but after I got the Fire supplement business going, I’m here a lot more. It’s great.”

  “Well, the hunts picked up,” Gabe said.

  “Right,” Ivy agreed. “That side of the business really took off.”

  “Wild pigs?” I asked.

  Ivy nodded. “They’re a hybrid from generations back, like a hundred years ago. Domestic pigs had gone feral, then European boars were released and interbred with the feral pigs.”

  “Huh,” I said. “Pig mules.”

  Ivy’s laugh was like ringing one champagne glass against another, a quick musical toast. “Result is there are these wild pigs running around most of California that hunters are happy to hunt, and ranch owners are happy to have hunted. Everybody wins.”

  Except the pigs, I figured, but chose not to say out loud.

  Gabe smirked all around the table and elbowed me. “When I found her this morning, she was worried that someone would shoot her dog. I told her how people have to be careful of what they’re shooting at.”

  Stuckey studied his stew bowl.

  Ivy gave all a quizzical look, but said at last, “We have safe hunts. We make sure to inspect the guns—no twenty-twos or other inadequate calibers—tags, everything. They’re accompanied all the time by Gabe or Stuckey, or even Oscar or Eliana.”

  Trying to picture Eliana following a hunting party around, telling city folk in her limited English when and where they could shoot, made me smile. Ivy tipped her wineglass toward Eliana and gave one quick nod.

  I thought she’d been toasting her female guide, but I realized, when Eliana jumped to refill Ivy’s wineglass, that I’d misread her gesture. What else was I missing? “But your main business is sheep? And you had a real shepherd, a human one. And now, what do you use since you don’t have a guardian dog for your livestock?”

  Ivy sighed. “We’ve tried different things. Fencing, patrols, scent. Jack is a help. We wanted to use the livestock protection collars. You know about them?”

  I dipped my chin in affirmation. “They come from Texas, like me.”

  “You’re from Texas?”

  “Originally.” The collars she was referring to consist of two black rubber bubbles of poison that are strapped to the throat of every lamb and ewe. The coyote that bites the sheep’s neck dies.

  “They’re not exactly legal around here anymore,” Gabe said. Ivy explained. “California banned them.”

  “They’re banned in Oregon, too,” I said, “but M-44s are still legal back home last I heard.”

  Ivy frowned and leaned forward like an eager student. “M-44s? I don’t know about those.”

  “Spring-loaded cyanide devices,” I explained, “that a predator bites or tugs on. Kills ’em fast.”

  The battle between wildlife protection and livestock protection will never be over.

  Ivy looked around the table and frowned again. “How do they know only the intended predator activates the M-44?”

  “They don’t,” I said. Gabe nodded. Oscar and Eliana looked bored, and Stuckey looked at his stew, the bowl still half full, which was amazing. The braised boar meat and poblanos of this Zuni stew, melding for hours, it was a delight to the tongue. Even my Guy, the culinary wonder of Butte County, Oregon, would have been impressed with Eliana’s Zuni stew.

  I was real glad when everybody got up and Eliana was going to show me to the guest bedroom, down the other wide hallway. Charley of course stuck to my side, pleased with the joys of best-house-living while men were banished to the bunkhouse.

  The men milled by the open front door now. It was just too awkward to tell Ivy what I figured Charley had been trying to say, but I managed to ask if I could borrow a horse in the morning to take a goodbye ride. Ivy had been more than kind to me, and she was willing yet again.

  “Yeah, Gabe said you were great on a horse, said you untacked Decker and brushed him down and everything. Help yourself.” She said she had some work to do in her office, apparently forgetting, thank all, about her earlier need to have a serious talk with me.

  As the three men filed out, I heard Stuckey mutter in a surly tone. “You don’t got to needle me like that.”

  “Just funning,” Gabe laughed as they walked away in the dark, followed by Oscar.

  Eliana shut the door and went to the kitchen. I headed for the spare bedroom and soon heard her on the other side of the wall. As I fell asleep, it occurred to me that someone else knew what Charley and I knew. And likely as not, that person who knew where Vicente Arriaga lay dead and buried had been at Ivy’s dining table tonight.

  Chapter 10

  DAY BREAKS EARLIER AND A SIGHT smoother in Northern California than up in Butte County. Good weather for a goose was all we’d had for a while in my part of Oregon. That’s how our winter starts, stays, and ends.

  I creaked open Ol’ Blue’s door, fetched my cell phone, then eye-balled the farmhouse by the barn. All lay Sunday-morning-quiet in there. Given the odd task I’d assigned myself, it was a good thing Gabe and Oscar and Stuckey weren’t around as Charley and I stepped into the dark barn aisle. Back in the house, there’d been not a sound from Ivy or Eliana when Charley and I slipped out into the sunrise.

  A heaviness like wet sand seemed to slow all my limbs. The nausea and headache were back, if they’d ever been gone, and the reality of what I was aiming to do settled in to haunt.

  Charley followed me all the way down the barn aisle and through the little end doorway to the cinder-block room that now served as a slaughterhouse. I couldn’t help standing and staring at the magnificent old open forge, the hand bellows meant to coax fire that had lay dormant too long, the racks that should be housing farrier tools. This was not supposed to be a place where fresh-killed wild pigs got prepped to become stew, but rather where metal was made hot, malleable enough to shape into horseshoes or good tools. I tried to ignore the scent of blood seeping in from the next room but couldn’t help imagining the hanging carcass of the pig shot the day before.

  The coke shovel was the best I could lay my hands on. I considered the horses. Gabe had ridden the buckskin. Maybe it was his horse. The flashy, powerful chestnut colt with four white stockings and a bald face was unshod, with long, chipped hooves. The big black Appaloosa mare was due for a shoeing. Again, I pulled the blood bay from his stall and asked him if he’d like to go back up the hill. Decker’s wide-eyed look of wonder was good enough to take for agreement.

  As I saddled up, I shot a thought at Charley so hard he turned and blinked at me. I’d do whatever it took, I told my good old dog, as I mounted up and we rode away from the barn in the quiet of early morning.

  “You honored him. And me. I will honor you.”

  ***

  Decker trotted in silence, climbing in the
early sunrise. I wanted to enjoy the pleasant sound of his hooves crunching dirt in thuds, but my dread of the summit was distracting. Halfway up the highest hill, I turned the gelding slow on his haunches, a full three-sixty, taking in the view to the west, the Black Bluff sale grounds on the edge of town, then east, where another ranch—a cattle operation—bordered the Beaumont outfit. A small canyon paralleled the fence line on the other ranch, leaving them just a thin slice of useable land along the fence, though untold acres lay east and north of the canyon. South was just more California. Far north was where I wanted to be, but I was about to kick a wasp nest and it might take some time to set things to right after I stirred the dirt.

  In the distance off to the east, a lone rider rounded the top cut of the canyon and began to descend along the fence line.

  Riding fence, in my view, is one of the best chores in all of ranching, just you and a few hand tools, on a good horse, especially if followed by a good dog while checking and mending the property’s borders. Good work. I let Decker drift farther and farther east, on a course that would intercept polite hollering distance with the rider.

  If he was a horse, the old cowboy would be an old-style Quarter, plain-colored, but rim-rocker solid for a day’s work, just like the one he rode. Both looked full of patience and smarts that lasts even when the body is giving out. Clearly, the gelding had been athletic back in its day but was worn, looked to be well into his twenties. I wondered if he was a hand or the ranch owner. He didn’t seem to have noticed my dog, but I sure studied the little one following him, a small, gold Aussie, young and full of eye. Well, he was the spitting image of my Charley, is what he was.

  “Morning,” I called.

  “Morning.”

  I reined in when he did likewise on his side of the fence. “Was your dog sired by Fire, the stud dog they used to have here?”

  “S’posed to have been. She still have Laurel and Hardy working the place?” His unshaven jaw worked the Snus that pooched out his lower lip. His cowboy hat was filthy, packing probably fifty years’ worth of work dust.

  “Who?”

  Decker pawed the ground, impatient under me. I tapped my fingers on his neck to remind him to be patient when grown-ups talk.

  The old cowboy spat over his right shoulder then turned his face back toward me. “Maybe George and Lennie is more like it.”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “You’re new.” He nudged his horse to a walk.

  I kneed Decker, matching his stride to the rancher’s horse. “I don’t work here, mister. Would you tell me what you’re talking about?”

  “Not my place to say, but someone should have told her.” Then he goosed his horse hard away, creating enough distance between us to end the conversation.

  There was more than a fence between us.

  ***

  Talking to Guy at the summit would have been way better than getting his voice mail. But he didn’t pick up. I had way too much to explain—so I tried to keep the stress out of my voice and left it at I’d call him again as soon as I could. I sent him a text that said I was thinking about him. What else could I say? Then I took a deep breath to tackle this hideous job.

  The thing with digging of the kind I was fixing to do is my mind grew more wrapped around the creepy goal than it usually gets in a purely non-horse-feet-related matter. Before I even dismounted at the summit, Charley again pressed his body to that same spot in the dirt.

  “Right there? Okay.”

  I tied Decker to a shrubby juniper and freed the coke shovel from the saddle, wondering now if the old rancher might have seen my odd baggage, as I’d strapped it on Decker’s near—left—side. Only my off side—my right—had been visible in the cross-canyon greeting, but when I’d turned Decker to continue the conversation, the coke shovel would have been visible if he’d cared to look back. It’s not a tool for riding fence. The old rancher would think I was a loon or something worse.

  It’s not crazy to trust a good dog. Charley had a reason for his strange behavior. And my gut told me what that reason was.

  I dug around my dog, beside him, and as he shifted on the dirt that I scraped off that hill, I dug under him. It wasn’t fast work, but I kept at it.

  When the shovel’s blade hit something that wasn’t dirt, I was real careful, scraping the ground with a timidity born of respect and squeamishness. It got so I had to use my hands, and I wished I was wearing gloves as I scooped dirt away.

  Blue fabric is what I exposed. I gulped and brushed more dirt off, not sure what part of the body I’d unearthed. Had to make myself keep at the chore as the scent of the dirt changed.

  The body didn’t smell as bad as I feared, and it wasn’t even quite as scary as I expected, though I only uncovered enough to show the obvious. I left the head and face alone, not wanting to see.

  On the dead man’s torso was a dirt-crusted solid dark blue shirt, buttoned, intact but a bit threadbare, though maybe that was due to the way wool decays after it’s been buried for a couple of years. His arms lay at his sides, long sleeves buttoned down. I brushed a bit more dirt off, then hesitated. The outline of his legs extended beyond his jeans-encased hips in more dirt, but I’d had enough. Enough that I didn’t expose the man’s face, which I was afraid bugs might have got to.

  “Is this Vicente, Charley? Was he your person?”

  What reaction I expected from my dog—Vicente Arriaga’s former dog—I don’t know exactly, but it wasn’t the indifference he displayed now, flicking a glance of the barest interest since I’d exposed parts of the dead man.

  Made me wonder if I was digging up the wrong grave. The Beaumont ranch was sizable enough that it could surely harbor more than one unclaimed body.

  Chapter 11

  HADN’T IVY TOLD ME THERE WAS some sort of weird jurisdictional question about this property?

  Chewing the edge of my lower lip didn’t help me decide what to do. Finally, I pressed the personal number stored in my cell phone for the new probationary deputy in the Butte County Sheriff’s Department back in Oregon.

  Right as I thought the rings were going to take me to voice mail, Melinda said, “Hey. I talked to Hollis Nunn this morning—”

  “They’re back?”

  “Yeah, and he’s not happy.”

  “Because I hauled the bull for him?”

  “He said you shouldn’t be at the Black Bluff sale grounds. What’s that all about?”

  “Beats the hooey out of me. Ask him,” I said. “I did get ripped off when I was there, but I think it’s unusual—”

  “Ripped off?” Melinda asked.

  “Someone ripped off my truck and—”

  “Your truck got stolen? You didn’t say that before. Oh, man—”

  “I got Ol’ Blue back. And Charley … you know what? Never mind that right now. Not why I’m calling. Listen, I’ve got a po-lice question for you.” I pronounced po-lice in the Texas-proper, two-word-sounding way. “I’ve sort of found a body. You know, like a dead person, and I’m wondering what exactly is the right next step.”

  There was a good three second pause.

  “You just filled me with questions,” Melinda said, speaking slow enough to be suspected of talking to a moron, “but I’m going to cut to after the chase and tell you to call the police, Rainy. We hang up and you call nine-one-one right now.”

  “Yeah, but what do I say?”

  “Do you know where you are?”

  “’Course I do.”

  The doubt in her voice showed she knew me well. “Then you give the person who answers your call the address.”

  “See that’s the thing that’s maybe a little tricky. Will they just get the location off my cell call somehow? Or will they have to look up where to go when I say I’m at Ivy and Milt Beaumont’s ranch, out east of Black Bluff?’

  Melinda exhaled like she was showing me all kinds of patience. “So, you’re at someone’s house? Beaumont. You’re on these people’s place? The
re’s a building with a house number?”

  “Well, no, I’m way up on a hilltop. I wouldn’t be able to use my cell back at the house. The signal’s bad there. It’s bad most places on this ranch.”

  “And this body you’ve found,” there was a pause as Melinda took another big breath and then only half-stymied a scream at me, “it’s on a hill on the ranch? That’s where your dead body is?”

  “I’m looking at it.”

  “So, if I was at the ranch house, how would you tell me to come meet you at this particular place on the ranch? Can you give directions to where you’re standing right now?”

  “Sure, but do I need to worry about the jurisdiction thing? Like exactly what part of what county I might be in? I’m not real clear on that.”

  “Just call nine-one-one and tell them where you are. They’ll send the closest people to you right away. Don’t worry about jurisdiction, all right?”

  My, Melinda does go on like I’m four-fifths stupid.

  “Okay, I get it. Hey, since I’m a bit out of touch and might not get back for the evening feed, could you check in with Guy and take care of the horses again tonight if he’s not around? And maybe same in the morning, since I’ve no idea when I’m going to get on the road now?”

  Of course, Melinda agreed, so with that settled, I quick called Guy’s cell phone but got his voice mail. I left him a good one, the cleaned-up version of what was going on, how I’d had to find Charley, finishing with, “I really miss you.” And I texted the same after reading texts from him that were composed of a lot of question marks.

  Getting home to marry that boy was competing for the high spot in my mind, even with a corpse at my feet. Picturing Guy, home, a memory, a weird from-nowhere thought came to me. Something that happened months ago at the Buckeye ranch, when Hollis and Donna got married. They sort of act like parents to Guy and me. Hollis had fondled my dog, and looked at me strange-like. They’d just been talking about what to do with Dragoon, Donna’s daggummed killer bull, and someone threw out the notion of taking him to Black Bluff. The idea had excited me, as I’d long wanted to see the sale and work my dog there. Then Hollis had told me that I ought not go to the Black Bluff bull sales.