Ground Money

by Rex Burns

  “Lord, that food smells good,” said Jo. “I’m starving.”

  Wager’s mouth felt wet with hunger, too, and wine didn’t soften it as beer did. But the aroma of cooking wasn’t what had been on his mind as he gazed at the flowing water. “It’s been a good day, Jo. I’ve really enjoyed this day. I’ve enjoyed being with you.”

  A smile crinkled at the corner of her eyes. “Better than being a cop?”

  “No. I like being a cop. So do you. Maybe I’m enjoying this more because I know we’ll go back.”

  She turned to peer at him through the dusk and started to say something that had a laugh in it. Then stopped. Finally she said simply, “I’ve enjoyed it too.”

  “Hey—suppertime! Come and get it or I’ll throw it out!”

  Sidney’s call interrupted their long kiss, and Wager gave a little groan.

  “Was that your stomach or mine?” asked Jo.

  “It was me. But it wasn’t my stomach—I think that gave up an hour ago.”

  “Mine hasn’t—come on, last one gets the smallest steak!”

  They ate sitting around a fire of driftwood, the smoke rising out of the glare of flames to disappear against the wide strip of stars marking the canyon walls.

  “Do you want some help with the tent?” asked Wager. “Or don’t we need one?”

  “We can rig a fly if it rains. But this time of year, the only thing’s a few thunderstorms, and not many of them. They can be exciting—a lot of wind and lightning and it comes down like crazy for a little while. But we’re not likely to be hit with one.” He waved his arm at the surrounding darkness. “Sleep wherever you want—we’re the only ones here tonight.”

  “What’s that over there?” Jo pointed through the brush at a dim glow that rose and fell against a talus of large boulders.

  “That must be one of the ranch hands. They come down to see who’s camped and collect the landing fee.”

  The bobbing glow grew stronger, and in a few minutes they heard the grind of a vehicle geared low against the rutted trail leading up canyon. A pair of headlights swung from behind a shoulder of rock to rupture the night and bleach the tangle of limbs and shrubs as it mashed toward them. A moment later the lights and engine died and they heard the sound of boots crackle in the dry grass.

  “Evening, Sid.”

  “Hello, John—how about a beer?”

  “Sure.” Sanchez moved into the firelight, his eyes lingering on Jo’s bare legs before turning to Wager and blinking with surprise. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  Wager smiled. “Just enjoying my vacation.”

  “Here you go.” Sid tossed him a cold one from the ice chest. “Not too many people along the river today.”

  Sanchez twisted the Coors in his hand and flipped the tab up, a tiny spurt of foam hissing toward the fire. “There’ll be plenty before summer’s out. Looks like it’s still rising.”

  They talked briefly about the river and what lay downstream, Sidney asking about Boulder Field especially. John’s glance kept drifting toward Wager, his dark eyes masking any expression.

  “It was running thirteen thousand this morning. It’s probably about thirteen five, now.”

  “That much?” said John. “It might get as high as last year—wash all you river rats clean to Utah.”

  “Wait till that dam goes in. We’ll be running the river all year round.”

  “I reckon I can wait.”

  “How’d you do up at Grand Junction?” asked Wager.

  “OK. Jimmy got some money, anyway.”

  “Is your next rodeo around here? Maybe we’ll be able to make it.”

  The light flickered his face into shadow, turning the dark hat brim a dull orange over his eyes. “We’ll be in Denver next weekend. There’s a Mountain States regional we’ll be going to.” He tipped the can against the sky. “How long you staying with the Volkers?”

  Wager shrugged. “Another week or so. We’re in no hurry. There’s a lot of country we haven’t seen yet.”

  “Jimmy told me you came by the ranch. Sorry to miss you.”

  “Right. Me too. Why don’t you come to the Volkers’ sometime? We’re staying at their hunting cabin, the one on the creek below the ranch house. Know it?”

  “Never been there.”

  “It’s easy to find. Come on by—we’ll have a drink for you.”

  “Maybe I will.” He crushed the thin metal between his fingers and tossed it onto the sand beside the fire. “Thanks for the beer, Sid.”

  They watched the jeep back and turn, its brake light flashing brightly, then bouncing away into the darkness.

  “You two know each other well, Gabe?”

  “I knew his father. I’ve just met John and his brother.”

  “Jimmy’s all right—he’s a good guy. A good rodeo rider, too.”

  “What’s wrong with John?”

  “Wrong? Nothing, he’s OK. He gets kind of hard-nosed, sometimes—likes to act like this big bad cowboy, especially when there’s women in the party. But he’s really OK when you get to know him.”

  “Do you see much of them?”

  “Only along here. I guess they patrol every night. Either Jimmy or John comes by every time I bring a party through, anyway.”

  “Do they patrol the other canyons, too?”

  “I guess if they saw a fire they’d take a look. But there’s half a dozen landings, and it could take all night to check each one—you have to drive way around to get in and out of them. And some you can’t drive to at all—the small ones.” A grin flashed orange against the firelight. “I made dry camp in a couple of them. If you go after dark and don’t light a fire, there’s no way they’re going to know you’re there.”

  An all-night patrol would explain why Jimmy was sleeping when Jo and Wager had visited the ranch. And it naturally raised the question why: Why would anyone want to spend that much time and effort making certain that no one camped on his land? The obvious answer was that the owner was hiding something, and that brought Wager around to the question what.

  “Hey—you still with us?” Jo tilted a final glass of wine from the bottle and handed it to him. “I thought you almost forgot about being a cop today. I did.”

  “Almost,” said Wager.

  “And then came Big Bad John.”

  He asked Sidney, “Can you walk to the other landings from here?”

  “Some of them. It depends on the river. If it’s low, sure. But most of the rafting’s over by the time it gets that low. In water like this, you might make it, but there are some pretty steep cuts you have to cross.” He started gathering the tin plates and utensils. They scraped the garbage into a watertight bucket and sealed the lid against animals. With river water heated over the fire in a five-gallon can, they washed the dishes, and then they hauled the raft another few feet up the bank and tightened the lines once more. “It may rise, it may not; but it sure would be embarrassing to wake up tomorrow without a raft.” Then they secured the rest of the scattered gear against wind or rain, and Sidney, surrendering to his yawns, unrolled his groundcloth and sleeping bag.

  Jo and Wager found theirs in the dark and spread them over the soft sand. They lay together feeling each other’s warmth against the chilling night as the fire gradually died to embers. Above, the river of stars gleamed with the crispness of a moonless night; a hundred yards away, they could hear the almost silent whisper of the ceaseless water. Across the stream, high on the opposite bluff, an owl hooted its furry call, and from the canyon where John had driven came the brief high-pitched shriek of a rabbit caught by some feeding animal. Jo stirred briefly in his arms at the sound, and then her breathing became deep and regular again.

  CHAPTER 11

  WAGER WOKE TO the rhythmic clack of a hand pump and the smell of frying fish. They were still in shade, but across the canyon the uppermost ledge already caught the sun and turned yellow and orange and pale gray against the blue of morning. Sidney had built up the fire and hauled in the
lines to skin the catfish and lay slabs of cornmeal-crusted meat in hot grease; now he straddled the bow of the raft and worked a hand pump hooked to one of the tubes. Beside Wager, Jo’s tousled hair sprouted out of her sleeping bag, and she lay motionless. Wager shrugged into the cold air and tugged on his cut-off jeans and a sweatshirt still warm from his pillow sack; his tennis shoes were damp yet, but the cold wouldn’t last more than a few seconds. After splashing his face with river water, he asked Sidney what he could do to help.

  “Why don’t you pump up the raft, and I’ll get breakfast going. It must have got a lot colder than I thought last night—the raft went down some.”

  “How much air do you want?”

  “Just make it firm, like that bow tube. When the sun gets on her, she’ll tighten up good.” He went to poke up the fire and flip the fish.

  Wager finished the last section of the tube, and Jo, face a healthy color from sun and a cold-water scrub, called him to breakfast. He had not realized how hungry he was until the first taste of hot and fragrant fish, and the others must have felt the same way, because breakfast—fresh pineapple, slabs of thick-crusted bread, strong coffee, and icy orange juice—lasted about ten minutes. “There’s eggs if you want them, and sausage. I brought it along in case the fish didn’t cooperate.”

  Jo patted her stomach. “Not a thing more! That was delicious.”

  “People like my cooking better out here than they do back home. So do I.”

  They packed up and strapped the waterproof bundles and chests securely to the raft’s D-rings and frames. “We’ll probably bounce against a few rocks today—Boulder Field’s going to be exciting. We don’t want to go through there without everything tight and secure.”

  “Will it be like the rapids yesterday? Those first ones?”

  “It’s not as sharp a drop, but it’s a lot narrower. And it lasts a lot longer. We’ll have to scout it out before we run it.”

  Wager asked how far down the river it was.

  “About eight miles. There’s a good put-in just above, so we can get a look at it.”

  “I’d like to spend some time along shore before we get there.”

  “Most of what we’ll be going through is T Bar M land.”

  “I know.”

  Sidney looked at him curiously. “They really don’t want trespassers.”

  “I thought they wouldn’t mind if they didn’t see us.”

  “Well, yessir, that’s true enough. But they really don’t like it. And Ron would get awfully upset if he knew I was antagonizing them.”

  “Is there some way you can put me ashore by myself and pick me up later?”

  Sidney ran his hand under the sun-bleached hair that curled at the back of his neck. “Are you looking for something?”

  The question was bound to come, and Wager wished he had a better answer. “I’m not sure what I’m looking for. I’m a cop—we both are. And we’re interested in what’s going on at that ranch.”

  “You’re a cop, too?”

  Jo nodded.

  “Man, I didn’t think … I mean, he kind of looks like a cop, but you sure don’t.”

  “You should see me in uniform.”

  He glanced from Jo to Wager. “What do you think’s going on at the ranch?”

  “I’m not sure anything is. That’s what I want to find out.”

  “Why can’t you just go there and make them let you look the place over?”

  “It’s their property. I can’t do that without a warrant.” He couldn’t do it with a warrant, either, because it wasn’t his jurisdiction. But there was no need to confuse the boy. “And I can’t get a warrant without probable cause—without a good idea that something is going on.”

  Sidney chewed his lip. “Undercover? Is that what you guys are?”

  “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say anything about it.”

  “Wow. It sounds like something from a book or movie or something.” He nosed the spatula at some burned grease in the large iron frying pan. “It’s kind of exciting.”

  “What I want to do is look around some of these side canyons, and do it without being seen.”

  “A recon mission?”

  “You got it.”

  “Landing from rubber boats in enemy territory …”

  It wouldn’t be all that dramatic—Wager hoped it wouldn’t be all that dramatic. But it wouldn’t hurt if Sidney got caught up in the moment. “Just like that.”

  “Wow.” He pointed downstream. “The next landing on this side’s about half a mile down; you can walk there—the beach goes along to it. We can come down in an hour and tie up on the other side and fish some. You signal us when you’re ready and we’ll come across and pick you up.”

  It was as good a plan as any. Wager took off briskly, staying as close to the water’s edge as the chaos of fallen rock would allow. Occasionally he found a deer trail that etched a faint shelf across the steep faces, and he followed that through the stiff grass and clumps of wiry brush. But most often he had to scramble around shoulders of shattered rock that led up to the mesa hundreds of feet above. After a good half hour of climbing up and down like an ant across the giant boulders, he saw a small V in the walls where a stream once cut its way down to the river.

  He studied the notch. The steep cut led away from the main canyon, a tangle of willow and hackberry forming a thick screen along the river. Even the morning cries of birds had ceased by now, and the only sound was the water, a steady echo against the rock like a ceaseless wind. Keeping away from the scattered patches of sand that would leave footprints, Wager worked down spines of rock to the floor of the gulch and past a sign warning, “Posted—Keep Out.” An animal trail tunneled through the bushes, and Wager, bending low, picked his way along the narrow path and up a shelf into a rocky field dotted with cottonwoods. Somewhere up the cliffs a crow squawked sharply, alerted to his movements, and in the heat Wager began to sweat and feel the sting of scratches on his arms and shins. But he saw nothing. He wandered several hundred yards to where the gulch began to close into a long slope of cactus-dotted soil leading up to the next bench of stone, but the only human or animal sign was a scattering of long-dried cow dung.

  The raft was waiting across the channel when he got back; Sidney had tied to a spur of rock, and he and Jo made lazy casts downstream toward a large eddy. When they saw Wager on a boulder at the river’s edge, Sidney pulled hard across the current. The raft was carried below Wager, and he scrambled across the jagged, slippery rock to the closest landing; Sidney, with a heave on the bending oars, nudged the craft against a sloping shelf of stone, and Wager tumbled aboard as he pushed off quickly into the main current.

  “Find anything?”

  Wager shook his head. “A bunch of horseflies.”

  “Man, those things smart, don’t they?” Sidney was a little disappointed, but there were a dozen or so other places downriver.

  “We didn’t catch anything, either,” said Jo. “But I had a strike.”

  “Hop over and wash off the sweat—it’ll make those horsefly bites feel better. Put your life jacket on first, though.”

  The next landing was across the river where a tongue of stony soil tumbled down to disappear into the water. The raft touched briefly above, and then Sidney rowed hard toward the steep cut of the opposite bank. Wager scrambled up past the inevitable Keep Out sign to a shelf of level earth that formed the floor of the side canyon. Working his way across the sun-baked flat, he followed a dry wash beyond a line of heavy brush. Carved into the clearest section of the canyon floor, a small plowed field stubbled from last year’s harvest wavered in the heat. A handful of birds scattered to fly up the canyon walls, and across the hundred yards of open field, a deer froze, staring at him, its black stump of tail twitching nervously. Beyond, where the field ended, an eroded rut of road curved away toward the mesa.

  “Anything there?”

  Wager, pulling himself over the side after his swim for the raft, grunted no. “An old fiel
d—corn, I think. Do ranchers grow many different crops in these canyons?”

  “Mostly hay for the cattle. I didn’t know you were in the homicide department.”

  Jo handed him a cold beer from the tow sack. “We’ve been talking police work.”

  “I am,” said Wager, tilting the beer down his dusty throat.

  “Did John or James kill somebody?”

  “I don’t think so. But I hope you don’t talk it up too much. Undercover means secret—ours and yours.”

  “Oh no, I’m not going to tell anybody. God, if I did that—told Ron about letting you ashore along the T Bar M—man, he’d have my butt! He doesn’t want any trouble with the ranchers along the river. They tried to close the river down a few years back and Ron had to get a lawyer and everything.” He added, “And if anybody sees you, tell them you swam ashore to go to the bathroom or something.”

  “I won’t tell Ron if you don’t. How’s that?”

  The third time wasn’t the charm; it was the fourth, and even then there wasn’t much to see. The largest of the side canyons they had passed so far was masked for a quarter mile above and below by a wide lip of brushy earth rising a few feet above the river. Wager found a black plastic pipe trenched into the bank and leading under the loose soil past the river growth. About a hundred yards inland and fenced against cattle and deer, a wide field of earth was ridged into furrows where young plants made evenly spaced green dots in the sunlight. The siphon pipe carried the river water up to a gas pump and dumped it into an earthen reservoir about ten yards across. Lying flat like strands of spaghetti over one shoulder of the dam, a series of white plastic irrigation hoses led to each of the furrows. Looking closely, he saw that every other plant was marked by a popsicle stick, and looking even closer, he had the answer: marijuana. It was a marijuana farm, with about two thousand seedlings carefully set in and irrigated from the newly built pond.