“DU PRÉ,” SAID PACKY, “you’re nuts. I couldn’t make it down that hill with this leg. And you act like I’m the only man in the damn county has a use for shoein’ nails. Is this all because of that dog? Jesus, man, I found the dog thirty miles away.”
“I tell that Corey Banning she is all over you like stink on shit,” said Du Pré, “so you better think good and you better have some other people they know where you were that damn night, you know.”
“I pulled shoes till fucking two in the morning,” said Packy. “I did it three different places. You know me, I just make my rounds and send my bills out and that’s it. I didn’t see anybody. They were out or they were asleep.”
“Which places you do that at?” said Du Pré.
“Stemple’s. They was off in Billings, you know. Then I did some at Moore’s, till about ten at night. Then I went way the hell out to the St. Francis place. I hate those bastards and they take lousy care of their stock, but I got to do what I can. I love horses.”
“And they were in jail that night,” said Du Pré.
“Well,” said Packy, “they are a lot. But the lights were on in the house and there was a pickup there I didn’t know. It was dark, I didn’t look at the license plate. It took a long time to catch all the damn horses and it was after two-thirty when I finished.”
Du Pré nodded.
“Packy,” said Du Pré, “if you are lying even a little bit you got to tell me now, for Chrissakes. This is a very bad business. People around here they got to know some who did this. OK? Them FBI they will not go away, me and Bart we won’t stop. We can’t, they can’t. It was wrong, that. They cut fence and shoot stock we arrest them, make them pay. But not that.”
Packy raised his hands. They were covered in scars, white memories of cuts and punctures from his hard work. A couple fresh red holes.
“OK,” said Du Pré, “I will do this. I will tell that Banning about the nails but not about you. She probably figure that out, you know. I got to do that that way, you know.”
Du Pré rolled a cigarette and lit it and he smoked a moment.
“OK,” he said, “you are at the St. Francis place, you see this pickup. Now, they got some other trucks out there. Any of them gone, you know?”
Packy shook his head. “They had a couple old beaters, didn’t even license them, used ’em for hauling on the ranch. Never took ’em off of it. Then they had that canner truck.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” said Du Pré, “I forgot about that.”
The St. Francis brothers bought dead animals for the dog food canners and the rendering works. They had a truck with a stainless-steel bin on the back, one that could be steam-cleaned. Winch and tackle.
I bet that cable was long enough to let that damn car with them two dead people in it down into that gully. Careful, so it don’t catch fire.
“The pickup,” said Du Pré softly. “What can you remember? Light? Dark? You tell what make?”
“I don’t know new trucks so good,” said Packy. “It was dark and it had a low camper cap on it and that’s all I remember. I was tired as hell and I hardly looked. I don’t know whether the canner truck was there or not.”
It damn sure wasn’t there.
I find out who run that truck when the St. Francis brothers are in jail or busy sometime other way, you bet.
“OK,” said Du Pré, “I think I tell that Banning now about your nails down there, in the gully.”
“They weren’t mine,” said Packy. “Damn it, they weren’t mine.”
“We got to find out some things,” said Du Pré. “You better come with me, I guess.”
“Christ.”
“It is better than she come for you, maybe with some them fools she got stuck down in the trailer,” said Du Pré.
Packy got into Du Pré’s Rover, and they drove down to the trailer park where the FBI was parked.
Corey Banning’s big diesel pickup was parked out front.
Du Pré and Packy got out and walked on in. Corey and her three assistants looked up from their desks. Du Pré nodded.
“We got to talk, Corey,” said Du Pré.
Corey got her coat and put it on and they went back out and sat in Du Pré’s Rover. Every other second a face appeared at the trailer window.
“OK,” said Du Pré, “I went back out, the place where those two people found dead, up on the bench there. I find some horseshoe nails, I go to talk to Packy, he says they are not his, he did not put them there.”
Corey looked at Packy impassively.
“That night Packy say he is shoeing, I mean taking shoes off for the winter, he does horses at Stemple’s, at them Moores’, then goes on out to the St. Francis place. They are in jail we know. But Packy he see a pickup there, one he don’t know. Don’t know there, anyway. And then I ask him, other trucks the St. Francis got? He says, they got a canner truck.”
“Holy Christ,” said Corey Banning. “Who else drives that truck when the St. Francis brothers are in the jug?”
“Me, I don’t know,” said Du Pré. “I miss that, I don’t sell my dead horses, I bury them, I sign off horse shipments but I don’t sign off dog-food horses already dead. I live here all my life, I know them St. Francis do it, but not who does when they cannot.”
Corey Banning nodded.
“Got a nice long winch on it,” she said. “I don’t think that they thought it would get seen. Didn’t think we’d use choppers.”
“No,” said Du Pré, “it wasn’t important. If the dead people, their truck are found, Martin wants it found.”
“That’s a conspiracy,” said Corey Banning. “Bingo. They means conspiracy.”
Du Pré nodded.
“Other thing, I think that these people knew that those little fools were coming, and they spotted them and they followed them. Killed them. Make a point, them.”
“Uh, huh ho ho,” said Corey Banning. “And who here lives in both worlds?”
“Yeah, I guess we know now,” said Du Pré.
“Whaddya think, Packy?” said Corey Banning. She grinned at him.
Packy looked blank. He looked away.
“I’m scared,” he said. “I’m accused of something horrible. And you think I did it.”
“Nope,” said Corey Banning, “I don’t think you did anything bad, Packy. Not at all. Not a moment. What I think, you little fucker, is that you know something you ain’t telling us. Not even something you saw. Something you heard, I think. What did you hear, Packy?”
“Hear?”
“You move around a lot, Packy,” said Corey Banning, “and the weather wasn’t all that bad, the fall here. Why the fuck are you out there till three in the morning?”
“I do that a lot. It was dry, I do that a lot.”
Corey Banning nodded.
She looked off into the distance.
“Who drives the damn truck, Packy?”
“The canner truck?” said Packy. “I do.”
“You do,” said Du Pré. “You son of a bitch, you quit playing your fucking games with me. Damn you.”
“Look,” said Packy, “I didn’t do it and I just don’t know if that truck was there that night. That’s all I said. Now I’m tired of being yelled at. Take me home, damn it.”
Du Pré looked at Packy. He looked at Corey Banning.
“Let him go,” said Corey. “But, Packy, you stick around. And if I ask you a question, you bastard, you give me an answer. All of it.”
Packy got out of the Rover and he limped off.
Du Pré rolled a cigarette. He lit it, offered a pinch of tobacco out the window.
“Give me some, too,” said Corey Banning.
She did the same, mumbling.
“These people who were killed,” said Du Pré, “they belong to some group want to take the West, make it over for them. That group decide, this night, we cut fences, we shoot cows. Maybe all of them aren’t killed, maybe some they chicken out, you know.”
Corey Banning nodded.
“At last,” she said. “Useful work for my three dear friends in the trailer. Who’s a member of Earth First or whatever who is also from here?”
“I hate this,” said Du Pré. “I could maybe take them being mad. Not waiting on these kids like that, I cannot take that.”
Corey held out her hand for Du Pré’s tobacco and they smoked for a while. Du Pré reached under the seat, had some whiskey, put it back.
“Packy,” said Du Pré, “he is some scared, you know.”
“He should be,” said Corey Banning.
“I am scared, too,” said Du Pré.
“You should be, too,” said Corey Banning.
“Why, you think?” said Du Pré.
“ ’Fore this is over we are all going to find out things about our people we will really wish that we did not know,” she said.