Chapter 19

A BRIDLE WAS ALL I TOOK as I slipped into the paddock attached to Decker’s stall. He took the bit easily, and I brought him out through his paddock gate rather than through his stall and into the barn aisle. Gates don’t want to be stood on. It’s bad for the hinges. But in my haste, I used that paddock gate for a mounting block and landed lightly on the bare red back, felt his warmth beneath me. And I only hand waved to Charley that he should come along, because I wasn’t going to make more noise by calling to him or even slapping my thigh as we escaped.

In minutes, we were away, bareback in the last hour of the afternoon.

If anyone spied us or called out when we trotted off, I didn’t notice. I eased Decker down the ranch road eastward before striking up the hill, less in view of the house and the barn. In time, the route brought me to rustling sounds beyond the brush and of course it was Charley’s intensity that communicated the presence. Wild pigs? No, Charley wouldn’t have any interest in pigs, but sheep drew his fancy, sure enough.

Paying attention to my dog gets the best answers. A clearing in another hundred yards showed the flock. The donkey jack rested in the middle of the ewes, a king with his minions. The mule john some distance from them was much taller, darker, and slenderer than his sire, and interested in us as well. Too interested. It started following us, wanting to join up. I wheeled Decker away to discourage the mule. In another five minutes of riding east, I was in view of the neighboring ranch and the old cowboy who’d stopped his horse there.

He swung his hat in a big arc from one side of his horse to the other. I waved and rode on, trotting Decker up the hill with occasional walk breaks, but when I looked back, the horseman was flailing a yellow kerchief back and forth, the gloved hand reaching as high into the air as he could. That steady horse under him swiveled its ears with the commotion but didn’t dance or shift around a speck.

So, the rider was flagging me. I considered ignoring him but thought better of it. There’s a code. He needed to make talk. Maybe he was having trouble. I turned Decker and made for the fence between us, trotting to get the deed done while the rider waited on his side of the fence.

“Oh, it’s you,” the old rancher said as I got closer. “I thought from the distance it was one of the boys.”

“It’s me,” I said.

He racked one knee on his saddle’s near swell and I knew we were going to parlay if I’d take the time. His brown gelding cocked a hip and looked like it would wait all day. I wondered if this old cowboy before me had a herd of bays, browns, and chestnuts. He sure hadn’t given in to Ivy’s predilection of choosing flashy-colored horses.

The good old boy ahorseback pointed at shrubby manzanita on his side of the fence. A trench had been dug along the edge of the brush.

“Saw one of you slip through the fence this morning. When I come down, he … or she … was gone and this was there.”

The earth was scooped away under that manzanita, shoveled into a mound six or seven feet long. Too linear to blame it on wild pigs rooting.

“I got no problem defending my property.” His tone offered a challenge.

And that’s when I noticed the butt of a pistol on his right hip, the side farthest away from me.

Apparently, silence wasn’t the right response to his veiled threat, because his grew harsher. “Did you do that? Come digging around on my ranch?”

“No, sir. I just now saw you flagging me and rode over. Did you see what the person was wearing this morning?”

“Just saw the dark hat. I was pretty far away.”

“A black cowboy hat?”

“Baseball cap.” He spat and studied me some. “You lose your saddle?”

“I just … went for a quick ride.” I put a hand on Decker’s rump and looked back toward the Beaumont buildings, but we couldn’t see them from this part of the property. I was glad. It meant no one back at the barn or houses could see me. “You said something a bit odd to me yesterday, sir.”

“Did I?”

“Yessir. You were talking about the hands on the Beaumont place, I reckon, and you called them by names I’ve never heard.”

“You’ve never heard of Laurel and Hardy?”

“Well, I have heard of them, but you used some other names.”

“Reese Trenton.”

I sat on Decker, blinking, lost. “Huh?”

“Howdy. I’m Reese Trenton.”

“Oh. Rainy Dale. Pleased to meet you. Mr. Trenton. About what you said yesterday …”

He looked at the western horizon for some time and finally came back with, “It doesn’t do to talk.”

Well, that was the end of that conversational branch.

Today, Trenton rode alone, without his dog, and he gazed at my Charley.

I cleared my throat. “That dog with you the other day, you said Fire was supposed to have been the sire. Is that what you were talking about, the thing that someone should have told Ivy Beaumont?”

He adjusted his horse to study Charley from the side then adapted to a new notion, calm as could be. “Damn, that is him. Excuse me, Miss Dale, but that’s the old herder’s dog, isn’t it?”

I felt the defensive possessiveness rise like a volcano through my core, ready to boil out my mouth. He’s mine now. He’s been mine the last two years. I didn’t want to argue for ownership with anyone ever again. I tried on Trenton’s nonchalance, looking at the sky as I said, “That’s my Charley dog.”

The truth was before me, this one slice of it anyways. When Trenton and I first met, I’d been looking at my dog’s son. If his dog were there now, sire and son would be face-to-face.

Imagine seeing your son. Oh, Charley, I thought. It’s a story for another day, but my, what I wouldn’t give. And how odd that the way it worked out, Trenton and I had met up along this fence line and our two dogs had come face-to-face. The rancher’s voice was still droning while I stared at my sainted old dog.

“Nah, what I was talking about the other day was the stuff in Nevada. Wildlife Services.”

“’Scuse me?”

“I’ve got friends who ranch in Nevada. One of them has a Basque herder who takes care of five thousand sheep for five-day stretches. They send out a tender to him. That herder’s got it all figured out.”

“Nevada.” I considered that information, setting aside the way the classic Basque herders of the west had long minded sheep. “You’ve heard some things about Oscar or Stuckey or Gabe? Vicente? I mean, the other day you’d said someone should have told her …”

He blew out enough breath to accidentally whistle. “Word was, one of those jokers was a Wildlife Services agent. Set an M-44 that killed a good dog.”

They’re all good dogs, I figured, and this was a bad story that we’ve all heard a version of, those of us who work in the ranching life.

But I wondered if Ivy knew her hands’ history.

“There are quite a few stories like that,” I finally allowed. It’s an ugly fact of life that Wildlife Services sets those cyanide traps on Federal grazes and ranch land to kill coyotes, but pets sometimes trigger the M-44s and get bombed in the face with a lethal dose of poison. It’s not new or news. I remember it happening in Texas when I was a kid.

“We run cattle,” Trenton said. “Our herd’s in four digits. I don’t reckon taxpayers ought to have to pay for a man to work his own land, but I don’t reckon they ought to interfere with me or any other rancher protecting what’s his. City people don’t understand predator problems and fencing or disease and feed costs. They don’t know a thing about this way of life.” He pointed at the land where Decker stood, waiting under me.

“This little hilly piece was cut out of my grandfather’s land. My daddy owned it all. We never should have sold but needed the cash at the time.”

The Beaumont ranch was new money. That had always been clear. But the fence between Reese Trenton and me was a fairly new property line.

Trenton went on. “She’s got a few dozen sheep. Maybe fifty?”

When all those ewes lambed out every year, of course, Ivy’s flock nearly doubled, but there didn’t seem any point in arguing. Ivy wasn’t entirely my kind of people, but I still felt a loyalty to her and said, “Ms. Beaumont’s applied herself, I think, in learning how to run the place. She was new at it, starting from scratch, but she means well enough.”

It felt odd, defending Ivy to him.

He spat tobacco juice. “How old are you?”

I sat up straight on Decker. “I’ll be twenty-five next birthday.”

“I got underwear older than that.”

He might ought to think about acquiring some new underwear but before I could decide on whether to make the suggestion, Trenton took up more grumbling. “A hundred sheep on a couple hundred acres. Do the math.”

Cattlemen hate sheep men, say that virgin wool comes from ugly ewes, but we didn’t need to get into that old feud. I kept my manners on and said, “Sir?”

“Costs and income.”

Chewing on his prompt, I considered things I’d missed. Pretty quick, I saw he was right. What might Gabe and Stuckey and Oscar and Eliana be paid? What did the feed and electric bills run and what could the Beaumont ranch produce in income, even adding in the pig-hunting or her dog supplement business?

The balance sheet didn’t add up. Ivy’s outfit was strictly a hobby farm, not a moneymaking operation. The ranch was her pastime.

But I had an idea of where some real money was made. I’d been ignoring that poison and it was time to quit. I gathered my reins. Decker lifted his head, ready. Charley rose to his feet and took his position flanking Decker. But I turned to ask one more question.

“Was it Gabe who worked for Wildlife Services?”

“I don’t know the names on your ranch. It was the big one,”

My gaze fell on the trench again.

“That’s a grave-to-be,” Reese Trenton said. “And it wasn’t there yesterday. I don’t know what the hell’s going on over the fence, but I don’t want it spreading to my outfit. Maybe you’ll pass the word.”

He was right, and I was, well not wrong, but definitely in the wrong place.

“I’m Rainy Dale,” I said, again, trying to check the stress pitching my voice. It was late afternoon by now, and I’d have to drive all night to get home for my Monday-afternoon shoeing clients. “Having truck trouble now. I live in Cowdry, Oregon. It’s a tiny town you’ve never heard of, in Butte County. I’m about to marry Guy Kittredge. That’s supposed to happen this Wednesday. And if you hear sometime soon that someone else has gone missing from this ranch, it was me, and it would be great if you’d get in touch with Guy and let him know.”

“Young lady, er, Rainy Dale, was it? If you think you’re not safe, maybe you’d better come with me now. Unbridle that horse, turn him loose, and come through the fence.”

“No, I’m going up the hill to call my Intended.” And I squeezed my calves to make Decker take us there.

***

At the summit, I had a couple bars indicating a connection, but was short on battery life. I should have charged it today. I tried home, then Guy’s cell. When I didn’t get through, I hung up to check my messages. Texts and voice mails were waiting for me. I steadied Decker and stared all around while listening to the first voice mail from Guy.

“Rainy? Sweetie? Where are you? Melinda said that you got ripped off and …”

The police had turned up quite a bit of dirt on the hilltop. Charley gave their tilling a cursory sniff, peed on the rock cairn—what was the weird name Ivy had for the stack of stones?—and walked to the edge of the hill. I stepped Decker closer to the west edge of the hill and heard Interstate-5 traffic noise in one ear, Guy’s worried messages in the other.

As Guy talked about me coming home, I looked north, where the neighbor’s cattle ranch wrapped around the Beaumont property. A mixed herd of Herefords and Angus dotted the faraway sloping ground all the way to the heavy fence that buffered the interstate. Immediately to the west, where I got the most bars of cell reception, the descent was treacherously steep, straight down to the interstate. The scent of exhaust lifted with the sound. I couldn’t help thinking about finding Charley down there two years ago.

Working a great dog at the Black Bluff bull sale had been on my bucket list for a mighty long time. When I found Charley, I’d been trying to restart my life. In short order, I not only found my childhood horse who’d been sold off ten years before, but the night I bought Red back, I met Guy. Things went on from there to my building a better-than-good life up in Cowdry. Me and Guy are for keeps.

Mercy, hearing Guy’s voice was good for me. But I missed more than his voice. He’s got a way of thinking things through that’s good for me, too.

Guy’s next message screeched. “I didn’t get so much as a Post-it telling me you were leaving.”

I blinked, thought, figured it out. Spooky, Guy’s useless, chocolate-colored feline.

That stupid cat who thinks Post-its are playthings to be batted off wherever I or Guy, or in this case, Melinda, put them.

Guy hadn’t calmed down any on his next voice mail. “Your mother’s all upset about you being at Milt Beaumont’s place. Your father’s hauling up empty, and I don’t know where he’s going to park an eighteen-wheeler …”

Daddy left ranching years ago to be a long-haul driver, usually doing the I-10 route across the bottom of the country, trading for a run on I-5 whenever he wants to visit his only child, such as to come give me away at the wedding in two days.

Guy’s message got louder. “I want you to come home. I don’t like any of this. And please stay away from that bull sale. Hollis said you shouldn’t be there. Your tools are just stuff. There’s no reason for you to put yourself in jeopardy and—”

Guy looks out for me. It’s kind of sweet. He recently bought me earplugs and safety goggles and knee pads. Imagine that. The man picked up my horseshoeing magazines—I have two subscriptions—and read about shoers damaging their ears from the ring of a hammer striking a shoe on the anvil. And he read about a half-blind shoer who didn’t used to be. A chunk of hot slag kicked off a red-hot shoe the man was forming, and it caught him in an unlucky landing place—his eye. And he read plenty about shoers getting their kneecaps adjusted by one quick move from a horse they were working on. Then Guy went shopping, bought me all that protective gear. He’s like my mama in ways, only without the Southern California wannabe actress silliness and without having slept with my daddy at least once. And he’s a way better cook.

Like I was writing a vacation postcard, I thought, wish you were here, Guy. I tried hard to tune back into his fussing.

“… you have no idea if those people are trustworthy, and you stayed overnight, and that makes me even more worried about you and—”

My, but he does go on. Guy sounded fit to be tied, like a groom on his wedding night, even though that wasn’t to be for two whole more days. And my battery would not last forever. What if I could only get in one call?

“For crying out loud, Rainy,” Guy ended at last. “Call me and tell me what’s going on.”

Yeah, I’m signing up for a lifetime of this fussing, and Wednesday won’t come soon enough.

But I didn’t call Guy again. His mention of Hollis made me call the Buckeye ranch first.

One time when Charley and I were at the Buckeye spread for some herding and hollering, Hollis had petted my dog and looked at me real strange. I remember it like anything. He’d quit admiring my dog and he’d looked like he’d touched an electric fence somewhere in Charley’s thick fur. It was around the time of Hollis and Donna’s actual nuptials. And Hollis had discouraged me from ever exhibiting Charley at big herding events.

Heck with him. We were going to get to the bottom of this. I was thrilled when Donna Chevigny answered.

“It’s Rainy, I’m so glad you’re back, I—”

“My goodness, girl. I want to thank you again for recommending that Manuel Smith. It was such a pleasure to be able to go back-country. We had the best honeymoon, riding and camping. Isn’t that what you’re going to do? And I want to thank you for taking Dragoon to the sale when Manuel had truck trouble, although Hollis had some things to say about—”

“Would you pass the phone to Hollis,” I asked. “It’s kind of urgent.”

There was the sound of them talking in the background and then Hollis’s grizzled voice came up. “Well, hello there, Miss Rainy.”

“Hollis,” I hollered into the phone, “what do you know about my dog?”

“His ears are trimmed.”

Charley’s ear fringe grows shaggy, but of course I never trim those feathers. They help hide the fact that his ears are actually a little funky, shorter than they should be. While I tried to move my mind, Hollis went on.

“I’m not talking about the hair, I’m talking about his ear flaps. They’re short.”

“I don’t mind that his ears are short,” I muttered, wasting a shrug that Hollis couldn’t see. But the notion that Hollis had seen something I’d missed, and that he’d seen it long ago, caused a sick dread to descend on my shoulders like a wet cape. Maybe I hadn’t wanted to see.

“When it’s both ears,” Hollis said, “you know it was done on purpose.”

“What do you mean? Are you saying someone meant to cut Charley’s ears?”

“That’s what I mean.”

“Someone cut off the ends of his ears? What kind of a sick …” I sucked in my lower lip because I was ready to cry or kill at the thought of someone hurting my little old dog. With a long, stop-the-sniffles breath, I asked. “Why would someone do that?”

“To take off his tattoos.”

Crying didn’t help a thing, and didn’t help me hold up my end of the conversation either. The now-obvious truth of what Hollis Nunn had guessed from the get-go made me sick. I pictured one of Ivy’s or Eliana’s or Gabe’s or Stuckey’s or Oscar’s hands coming at Charley with garden shears, peeling back the hair and slicing off a part of my dog’s body, blood pouring, doing it again on the other side. I wiped my wet cheeks while Hollis made it plain.

“At some point,” he said, “someone thought your dog was valuable enough to need to be identifiable. Ear tattoos proved the dog was who they said it was. But later, someone cut his ear flaps off to get rid of the tattoos. That’s why I always thought you should stay away from herding events. Didn’t want whatever happened in that dog’s past to come bite you.”

I lost the connection to Hollis, hadn’t even realized I’d pointed Decker down the hill, picking up speed with every stride. I was ready to fight whoever on this ranch had hurt Charley.