Chapter 3

I SLIPPED THROUGH THE RANCH GATE, past more NO TRESPASSING signs, and walked up the ranch’s snaking two-track road. It rose up to meet me, which is not a good thing, because the exertion in the slight climb made my stomach turn and my head pound. Bile seeped into my mouth. I called for Charley, called and cried, called and got mad, tamped down the threatening puke-fest.

Beyond the little hill, on the side of the ranch road in the distance, sat Ol’ Blue.

Minutes was all it would take to reach my truck. From the little rise I’d climbed, I spied that white rental car on the public road beyond the ranch. I’d lose sight of that fellow—and forget his name, whatever it was—by the time I descended to Ol’ Blue. I was aware enough to see a four-wheeler paralleling me on a hill to the north, deeper into the ranch. He motored along barely above idle, slow enough that he didn’t raise dust.

Then the four-wheeler cut switchbacks down the hill toward the two-track that was taking me to Ol’ Blue. I saw the rider plain—a man in a cowboy hat, western shirt, and faded jeans. Saw that he’d reach Ol’ Blue before me.

The four-wheeler’s dust cloud boiled at my truck. The man stopped hard, dismounted, walked around Ol’ Blue with his hands cupped around his eyes as he peered in the cab and the topper windows. He tried the passenger door but didn’t open it. I couldn’t see if he also tried the door on the driver’s side.

Then he remounted the four-wheeler and gunned it straight at me.

Here’s a tip for men who want to bully a woman having a real bad morning: don’t. In this game of chicken, I’d be damned—oops, but not really—if I stepped out of the way of this man and his big loud machine.

He swerved and cut the engine. My ears popped, adjusting to the sudden quiet. I walked on like he didn’t exist, seventy-five yards from Ol’ Blue and happy to be closer to my truck than the stranger was, though he could certainly power up again and beat me to it.

He called out. “Morning, miss. This is private property. I’ve got to have you turn around and leave the ranch now.”

I walked on. Fifty yards to go.

The roar of the four-wheeler coming back to life killed what should have been peacefulness in remote country.

I walked. The four-wheeler pulled up beside me and matched my pace.

“That your truck?”

I nodded painfully, and so we reached Ol’ Blue, where he cut his engine again.

He unclipped a little radio from his belt and held it to his perfect teeth, flashing a smile worthy of a toothpaste ad. “Yeah, I’ve made contact. A girl, by herself. Turning around now. No problem.”

A squelch sounded, then a Spanish-accented male voice came back over the radio. “Okay, got it, thank you.”

Ol’ Blue was dead quiet. Nothing. No rustle, no furry yellow head with little cocked ears. The truck windows were still half open, the way I always leave them when Charley’s in there, so he has ventilation and can get out if the cab gets too warm.

“Charley? Come on, boy.” I turned my body to look and call in all directions.

Then I peered into Ol’ Blue’s locked cab. My ignition key was missing, which meant my house key and the key for the truck topper were also gone. I called for my dog again, tried to ignore my headache, and touched my truck’s hood ornament, a little replica of an anvil Guy glued on especially for me.

Ol’ Blue’s hood wasn’t too toasty, given the heat we were basting in, and California being what it is. The sun even works in the winter here. Diesels stay warm a while. Had it been an hour since I was at the back of the Black Bluff bull sale grounds? Way more? Less?

Like I was just learning to tell time, I studied my watch—ten a.m.—and wondered if that fellow who’d claimed to be helping me could have messed with my watch when I was woozy.

“Ma’am,” Four-Wheeler said, jerking a thumb in the direction I’d come from, “you have to go now. I’m going to escort you to the closest gate, which is that way. Okay, ma’am?”

Ma’am. He was probably a good thirty years old, five years older than me. He folded his arms across his chest. His dog wasn’t missing, and he hadn’t had been hit on the head, and had his truck stolen, too. Yeah, his day had shaped up just fine. Me, not so much.

I opened Ol’ Blue’s topper with dread. “Charley?”

I didn’t really expect him to be there, since I hadn’t heard a rustle inside the bed, but I couldn’t help checking for a silenced dog in the bed of my truck. There was no still body there. Well, that was good news. I studied the bad news, too.

It could have been worse, but it was pretty bad and feeling way worse. My whole shoeing box, the one I set beside the horse every time I’m working, was there and so was my stall jack, but the gate-mouth bag that held my new track nippers—the top-notch model that set me back nearly two hundred dollars—was wide open. I’d definitely left it zipped shut. It held all my backup tools and they were there but the new nippers? Gone. The nail cutters, the crease nail pullers, and two good rasps were missing from their slots in the wood toolbox, the one I set on the ground and rack my working tools on while shoeing. My forge was still on its swing-out arm—the one piece of gear I was least attached to, maybe the sorriest piece of gear I owned. I really need a better forge. I’d have to crawl into the truck to know if my pocket anvil was still there, but I’d seen enough for now.

I whistled for my dog and felt a stabbing pain in my skull. “Charley? Come to me now, buddy. Come on, boy. Charley!”

The four-wheeler cowboy racked a boot heel against his handle-bars. “You lose something, ma’am?”

What started as a favor to get the bull off a friend’s ranch and get me to the famous Black Bluff bull sale had played out in the worst way. I was a long day’s drive from home, missing some of my working tools, on a dusty ranch road in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t know how to get myself home from here. I’d been hit and dumped. Worst thing was, my dog was gone. So, yeah, I’d lost something.

Closing my eyes again, I remembered the sound of Ol’ Blue being driven away as I’d met the grass with my face, as my brain took a lap inside my skull from the whack. The sounds. I remembered hearing Charley in the bed of the truck. He about never goes through the rear slider window and climbs around my tools in the back. But I remembered the clinking sound, his rushing body, the mad scramble that I’d somehow known in a flash was Charley. Had he been trying to get to me? Trying to defend me?

There was no sound now but the light breathing of the man on the four-wheeler. I didn’t know him and didn’t trust him, plain and simple.

Guy, I wish you were here.

I peered into the cab through the driver’s window. My cell phone was still in Ol’ Blue’s open ashtray. Sunglasses hung from the visor.

“You have to go now, ma’am. I mean it.” He sat up straighter on his stupid four-wheeler.

I turned on my feet, but there was no sign of Charley in any direction. “I’m looking for my dog. I kind of woke up over there. I don’t know who moved my truck. But my dog’s gone.” I pointed beyond the ranch, though we couldn’t see the public land from this little hollow.

“Well, you should have kept him on a leash, and you shouldn’t have been on this land in the first place. There’s, like, a hundred signs all around the property edge that tell you—” He looked at me, then away, fidgeting on the four-wheeler. “Aw, don’t cry. Look, it’s okay, it’s just that—”

“I’m not crying!” I wiped the tears away and again turned in place, searching as far as I could see in every direction. “I want my dog. And someone hit me and dumped me out on that road and I just want my dog back. Charley? Charley, come on, boy. Come to me.”

“What do you mean, you got dumped out on the road? You all right?”

Jeez, I’m not a crier, I swear, but the shuddering breath I sucked in was near enough to bawling. “Charley? Charley!”

I tried to think it through. Someone had taken my truck, drove it here, stole stuff from it, and abandoned it. So he didn’t want my truck, it was just a sleazy way to set himself up with some shoeing tools. He must have had another vehicle waiting here, where he’d driven Ol’ Blue. Robbery in broad daylight. Even in my muddled state, I thought it seemed like a lot of trouble for a few tools.

Whoever hit me took quite a chance that he wouldn’t be seen smacking me at the far reaches of the bull sales ground, then taking my truck. He also took a chance that Charley, who’d apparently tried to get himself clear of the thief, wouldn’t bite.

Well, Charley wouldn’t. He might stare or growl to warn people off. Generally, that’s all it takes. Most people aren’t more trouble than that. Charley and I both understand such a situation. I have no quarrel with him not taking his forty-five-pound self to a life-and-death battle over a big chunk of metal. He’ll back off any animal that I’ve sent him to gather, he’ll guard any gate I leave unattended when we’re moving livestock. He collects Guy’s geese, puts them in the shed for us, brings the ducks off the Buckeye pond when Hollis wants to fish. He’s Charley, he’s my friend, he’s great.

How in the world could I leave this place with him lost? How could I drive back to Oregon without him?

Maybe the sound of Ol’ Blue starting up would bring him in. I remembered, then, that my keys were gone from the ignition.

“Charley? Charley!” I cupped my hands and yelled at the hills north and south, down the dusty road, east and west. I held my breath and listened, wiped my face, and called him some more. I climbed on top of Ol’ Blue’s hood, then cab, and hollered some more, making myself dizzy, hoping my voice would carry farther and I could see farther, far enough to see Charley come loping back to me.

“Ma’am, please come on down from there.” The man swept his hat off and ran a hand through his clumped, dark wavy hair.

“Mister, I want my dog back,” I said, teetering on top of my truck’s cab as I called for Charley.

“I’m Gabe.”

He just got scared, I told myself. Charley skedaddled when the scumbag stopped the truck and started stealing from it. I could picture it in the back of my eyeballs, my little dog scooting from the clangy, crowded truck bed—a place where he never rides anyways. I could picture the nervous eye he’d have given to the unknown man who’d struck me down. Sure, I could understand my dog clearing out. Protecting Ol’ Blue isn’t Charley’s job. He’s my buddy. Yeah, he works, moves stock for me, but I have that dog because I met him at a time in my life when I truly needed—and flat didn’t have—a friend in the world. And he was willing to take the job.

He’s sterling. I so love my Charley dog.

And he loves me, I just know it. I could understand him running off. From his perspective, he’d about been kidnapped. No one ever drives my truck but me. Even Guy doesn’t drive it—though that’s a story for another day—so anyone but me behind the wheel would look pretty far from cricket to my good old dog.

Guy.

I wanted to call my Intended, tell him what had happened. I went to my butt on Ol’ Blue’s cab, slid down the windshield, then fell off the hood, landing in a heap on the dirt like I’d been run over by my own truck.

The man jumped off his four-wheeler and moved to help me up. I hauled myself up by grabbing my truck’s grille, lacing my fingers into the hard metal edges. It hurt.

Four-Wheeler’s expression seemed to grow darker when I staggered to Ol’ Blue’s left hind tire and threw myself to the ground. He didn’t move while I lay on my back and wiggle-crawled, reaching up above my truck’s springs to undo the baling wire that holds my spare key up there. I’d have to pick a new hiding spot for the key. The cowboy was eyeballing me so hard when I wiggled back out from underneath my truck.

“Oh,” he said. “Locked out. You’re all right now?”

I gave one half-nod, made it back to the driver’s door, then threw myself into Ol’ Blue’s cab. The air in there hung hot and stale. I turned the key halfway and waited for the glow plugs to tell me to start the truck.

That’s when I lost it and wept alone in the cab, unable to fire up because I couldn’t leave Charley. The quiet of the truck was the most disturbing thing, far and away worse than missing tools. I switched the key off in the ignition. I wasn’t going anywhere. I shoved the truck door open.

“Charley?” Wrapping my mind around the fact that my Charley dog was really gone was going to make my skull explode. Had he run from the truck? Jumped out when the thief started to unload my tools?

The cowboy-hatted rider of the four-wheeler watched me, looking around this way and that while I checked my little cell phone. Nothing. I held the phone up high but got no bars of service.

On the other side of Ol’ Blue, the reception offered one flickering bar. I’d have to get the truck started, find my way back to a cell connection, maybe to the Black Bluff bull sale grounds, and call the police. The missing shoeing tools, I’d live without. They weren’t missing me, but I knew Charley was. He’s irreplaceable, the one thing I couldn’t go to my insurance company for fixing.

A scared dog can cover some miles, avoiding people. I didn’t want to drive farther away from him. I waved my stupid little cell phone in the air.

“I can’t get a signal.”

“No, that’s why we use the radios on this part of the ranch. There’s one big hill with pretty good service, but that’s the only reliable connection. I can radio to have a call made for you if you need someone to come pick you up.”

“I’m not from around here. I don’t know what road I was on or how I got here. I’m all turned around, and I just want my dog.”

How could I leave this spot where Charley had disappeared? Dropping to my knees, I puked spit and bad air. Waves of nausea kept coming. Sweat beaded off my nose. Palms in the dirt, I retched again, realizing as I wiped my mouth that I was probably streaking dirt all over my face.

“Charley? Come on, buddy. It’s over. That’ll do. Come back to me now. Charley!”

A terrible scream rent the air over the ranch’s next hill, then was cut off by two gunshots.