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.