“OK.”
I gave him my version of the Fillmore County stare. “Listen, there are a lot of ways this country can kick your butt. A little rain, you’re down in a coulee, and a flash flood will drown you in a second. Temperatures can spike up to over a hundred degrees by day and then drop below freezing by night. Hell, I’ve seen it snow in July. I’ve already mentioned the rattlesnakes. There’s scorpions out there, too, and black widows.”
Pick was clearly impatient to get going. “OK, OK. I’ll be careful.”
“Do you have water?”
“Five gallons in a jerry can. There’s also natural water out there, right?”
“It’s full of alkali. Drink it if you want your guts to explode. How’s your sense of direction?”
“Abysmal,” he confessed, “but I have a GPS.” He again opened the glove compartment and produced a handheld device.
“A tent?”
“Yes, but I’ll probably just sleep in my truck.”
“Food?”
“Canned stew. Some rice. Coffee. I have a pot and a little gas stove. I don’t eat much when I’m in the field.”
“Age? Next of kin?”
“Thirty-five. I have a mother in Topeka, Kansas. Why do you ask?”
“If you get killed, the authorities will want to know.”
“I’m not going to get killed, Mike. I’ve lived off the land in Argentina, Mongolia, Africa, all kinds of places.”
I figured it was time for me to wave him on so that’s what I did, then closed the gate behind him. The track he was following led past Blackie Butte and I was heading out that way pretty soon to catch that damn gimp bull, anyway. I would check on him to make sure he got to the BLM. As I watched him drive away, I was not encouraged. I saw his truck go up the first hill, then reach the fork in the road. He turned left, instead of right. I ran to the barn and got on the radio. “Pick, this is Mike. You went the wrong way.”
A minute passed and I called him again. Finally, he answered, “Pick here. I thought you said stay left.”
“Stay right. All three forks.”
“Got it.”
“You want to wait for me? I’m heading out that way in an hour or so.”
There was no answer, although I tried a couple more times. Now I not only had to find a gimpy old bull and bring it in, I had to look for a pony-tailed paleontologist, too. I allowed a cowboy curse, then got going.
3
That evening, I came rolling in with three heifers and their calves plodding in front of me. At the sound of the big truck, Jeanette came out of the barn. Ray, home from school, rose from behind one of our four-wheelers. The empty cans of 10W-40 on the ground informed me he’d been changing its oil. We take good care of our equipment on the Square C. I climbed out of the truck and opened up the pasture gate and herded the cows through it into the turnaround. They were looking pretty unhappy about the entire experience. Soupy added to their discomfort by nipping at their heels, aiming them toward the holding pen while Ray held its gate open. After weeks on the open range, we would have to give the free-rangers a thorough inspection to make sure they were healthy enough to go back into the general cow population.
Jeanette frowned after the bawling cows and calves, then said, “Mike, I don’t see that gimp bull. I guess he’s a pretty good hider. Maybe I’ll go out there tomorrow myself and catch him. My eyes are better than yours.”
I was upset or I wouldn’t have snapped at her like I did. “There’s nothing wrong with my eyes, Jeanette. I found that damn bull!”
“Well, why didn’t you bring him in?” She looked at me and I looked at her until finally she said, “You gonna tell me about that bull or are we just going to stare at each other the rest of the day?”
I pulled off my hat, a wide-brimmed Stetson I’d purchased in Billings when I’d first come to Montana to learn how to cowboy. I scratched my head, then plopped the hat back aboard. “He’s dead,” I said.
Jeanette didn’t react with much surprise. “The winter killed him. I swear those big old bulls are just overgrown babies.”
“Winter didn’t kill him. Somebody did.” I hesitated, still unable to completely comprehend what I’d found out there. “His throat was cut. Somebody brained him first, looks like, then sliced him open from ear to ear with, I don’t know, a hunting knife or something.”
Jeanette’s expression was one of disbelief. “Who would do a thing like that?”
“A bad man, I figure,” I said. “A really bad, bad man.” I hesitated again, but there was no way not to tell it. “Somebody also cut our fence. In three places.”
Jeanette chewed all this over. “Doesn’t make sense,” she concluded. “Who could sneak up on that bull to whack it in the head? It’s been running loose out there for months without us being able to catch it and, anyway, a bull’s got a skull harder than concrete. And who would cut our fences?”
“I’m just telling you what I found, Jeanette,” I said.
“When do you think all this happened?”
“The blood looked pretty fresh to me. An hour, two hours, something like that. Flies were just starting to collect.”
“You see that fossil hunter out there?”
“Nope, I looked around a bit and tried to call him. No answer.”
Jeanette appraised the angle of the sun, then rubbed the back of her neck. Even dirty, I thought it was a pretty neck but I was too tired and upset for that particular fantasy. “Dark in an hour,” she said. “We’ll wait for morning to track him down.”
“You think he did this?”
“No, Mike, I don’t think he did it. Or if he did, I’ve sure lost the ability to judge a man. I peg him for a tree-hugger and a lover of all God’s creatures, et cetera. I’m just hoping he doesn’t meet up with whoever killed our bull.”
“It sure seems a coincidence that this happened the same time that fossil hunter went out there,” Ray said, coming over from the holding pen.
“Well, if you hadn’t done that paper on your daddy’s fossils,” Jeanette said, “we wouldn’t be worrying about him, would we?”
I could tell Ray had already gotten an earful from his mom about his homework. When he hung his head, Jeanette provided an exasperated sigh, then said, “What’s done is done but, hell, I was afraid of this. All the work we got to do and now we got to go look for that fellow.”
Ray said, “Nick could use some exercise. I could saddle him and go out tomorrow first thing.”
Since the next day was Saturday, Ray had the time, and Jeanette thought his proposition over. “Carry a pistol,” she concluded.
Another reason I love Montana so much. Where else does a mother tell her teenager to carry a gun and nobody thinks a thing about it? Nobody but an import like me, that is.
“Anybody who kills an animal like that has to be crazy,” Jeanette said, turning to me. “Mike, you ever run across somebody like that in your former line of work?”
The “former line of work” Jeanette was referring to was the twelve years of employment I’d had in the Los Angeles Police Department including seven years as a homicide detective, my career cut short by a bullet, followed by a year of recuperation and three years as a private dick. It was not a time I recalled with much nostalgia. In fact, it was exactly why I was in Montana. I sorted through what I knew, most of which I was still trying to forget. “Lots of murderers get their start killing animals,” I allowed.
“Really?”
“Serial killers, especially.”
“Oh.”
“You might want to lock your door tonight.”
She gave that some thought, then said, “It would be the stupidest thing in the world to break into a house out here on Ranchers Road.”
Considering everybody on the road had lots of guns and knew how to use them, she had a point. I recalled a sign I’d seen on a rancher’s front porch. It featured a cartoon of a pistol with the words: WE DON’T CALL 911. Still, based on my cop years, I knew sometimes things happen in wa
ys nobody can predict. “I don’t like the idea of Ray going out there by himself,” I said.
“Then go with him,” she replied.
“I will.”
“I guess I really made a mess of things with that paper and all,” Ray said.
Jeanette allowed herself some motherly pride. “It wasn’t your fault. I called your English teacher and she said she thought your paper was so good, she put it up on the school Web site. I guess anybody could have made a copy of it. Whoever e-mailed it to that fossil hunter, though, has to be a damned fool. If I ever find out who it was, I’ll kick his tail.” When Ray and I just stood there, grinning at her, Jeanette said, “You two got work? Get to it.”
We got to it, loading the big truck with hay so we’d be ready to feed the cows in the morning.
Ray was in a talkative mood. “It seems like there’s us and then there’s the rest of the world,” he said as we grunted the hay bales onto the truck. “I mean, Mike, how come it seems like we think one way and nearly everybody else thinks different?”
“Like what?” I asked.
“At school, it seems like all I read is where everybody else in the country can’t wait for Washington, D.C., to solve all their problems. Out here, we just want to be left alone and look after ourselves. Out there, they murder each other, take drugs, the girls get pregnant without marrying or anything, seems like they’re just mad at each other all the time. I think I’d hate it out there.”
“Well, it’s not quite that bad, Ray,” I said. “But I guess it seems that way sometimes on television or in the papers.”
“But you were out there, Mike, and now you’re here. Why is that?”
I thought about Ray’s question before I answered. Finally, I said, “I came here because I was tired of being around people who were messed up, one way or the other. I saw a lot of people dead for no good reason but that was my job as a homicide detective. Then I worked Hollywood and I think that really soured me. I mean there’s worse things than murder, trust me. When I started to think my head was just as messed up as the people I was working for, I knew I’d better cut myself loose. That’s why I ended up here.”
“I’m glad you’re here, Mike,” Ray said.
“Me, too, Ray.”
“Mom says Dad thought the world of you.”
“Did she? Well, I thought the world of your dad. Your mom’s tops in my books, too.”
Ray smiled at me and I smiled back. Then we went back to work. That was the way of the county. Work, always work, and more work. A philosopher I admire said there was no water holier than the sweat off a man’s brow. If that was so, sacred water was not scarce along Ranchers Road.
4
We had ourselves a quiet night. No serial killers came calling and, though I kept waking up, all I ever heard was the yip of a passing coyote answered quickly by Soupy’s warning bark. The sun rose with some wispy clouds hanging around which gave our hills, meadows, and buttes a faded amber glow. I trooped on up to the turnaround. Jeanette came outside, regarded me gazing with pleasure at her property, then said, “Sleep OK?”
“Yep, considering.”
I didn’t have to say the “considering” was our murdered bull and the cut fences. The Square C was in trouble but what kind, neither one of us yet knew.
“Let’s get ’em fed,” she said and so we did while Ray slept in a bit. He was a teenager, after all.
We headed into the Mulhaden pasture where we’d brought in our cows during the winter to keep them nearby. This was the last of our hay but, because the winter had stretched on for so long, Jeanette thought we’d best use it and let the grass have a little more time to get going. The pasture was named for a family of Mormons who’d settled the land just after the Civil War. The name was all that was left of their legacy other than a grave of one of their children. It wasn’t too far from my trailer and every so often, I tended to its little headstone which was inscribed Nanette Mulhaden, 1867. I’d looked her up at the library in Jericho, our county seat. She only had the one year on her stone because she’d only lived three months. Poor little pioneer tyke. We ought to honor those pioneers in this country more than we do. We owe a debt to them that we’ve mostly forgotten.
Jeanette hooked a bungee cord to the steering wheel and put the big truck in idle, then climbed in the back with me. Soupy trotted behind as the truck made its way and we threw out the hay as the cows and calves got up and crowded in. When I first started cowboying, Bill Coulter taught me to pay attention to what calves did when they got to their feet. Healthy calves usually took a moment to stretch, he said. If they didn’t, best look to them. That morning, all the calves stretched, signs that both humans and cow mamas were doing our jobs. On the way back in, I said, “Is there anything prettier than a morning in Montana?”
“Next thing you know you’ll be writing that cowboy poetry,” Jeanette said, aiming the big truck with one gloved hand on the steering wheel.
“Oh, I could write some,” I replied, then fell silent, pretending to be lost in my thoughts although I was really thinking about her and the poem she was all by herself.
“Mike, I forgot about a meeting with the Independence Day organizers this morning in town,” she said. “I want you to go with me and pick up some fencing supplies while I’m talking to the committee. I’ve got a list for you.”
“I’m supposed to go out with Ray to look for the fossil hunter,” I reminded her.
“Well, I need you more than he does. Ray knows how to take care of himself.”
I chose not to argue. When we reached the gate, she braked, I sat, and she looked over at me. I was reminded of the old joke about three cowboys in a truck all dressed the same. Which one is the real cowboy? The answer is the one in the middle so he didn’t have to get out and open and close the gates. Well, I was a real cowboy but I was riding shotgun so I got out and opened the gate and Jeanette drove through while I doffed my hat to her. I closed the gate and took my time getting back into the truck. She looked over at me. “You were a little slow,” she said. “The big truck probably burned a quart of gasoline waiting for you.”
“Take it out of my pay,” I said.
“I just might,” she replied and I knew there was a fair chance she would. Bandying words with Jeanette was never a good idea, especially when it came to money.
When we got back to the turnaround, Ray was up and saddling Nick with an audience of one, that being Amelia Thomason. Her daddy’s truck sat nearby. Wearing jeans, a plaid shirt, cowgirl boots, and a hat with furled edges, she was a teenage cowboy’s dream. “Morning, Amelia,” I said and she looked over her shoulder and gave me a sweet smile.
“Morning, Mr. Wire. Ray won’t let me ride with him.”
“Why not, Ray?” I asked.
“Because she’ll talk my head off. That’s all she’s good for.”
I made an executive decision worthy of Dear Abby. “Take Dusty,” I said to Amelia, nodding toward a gray mare. Dusty was a gentle soul and I knew Amelia had ridden her before. Anyway, Dusty never minded a walk. She was one of those horses quietly curious about nearly everything. I’d seen her one time ponder a herd of antelope for nearly an hour without so much as dropping her head once to munch a blade of grass.
Ray frowned at me, a disappointment considering I’d just made a date between him and the prettiest girl in Fillmore County. “Well, get on in here,” he said, finally. “Dusty’s not gonna saddle herself.”
Since Ray didn’t seem prone to do so, I thought it best to fill Amelia in on what had happened the day before. “Whoever did it could still be out there,” I concluded.
She looked over at Ray who was fussing with Nick’s tack and pretending to ignore her. “I trust Ray to take care of me,” she said.
Ray proved it by going into the house and coming back with a pistol. It was a .38 Police Special. He handed it to Amelia who expertly checked it, then tucked it away in a saddle bag. Ranch kids.
“What’re you packing?” I asked Ray.
“Granddaddy’s forty-four,” he answered,
“That ought to do it.”
Amelia finished saddling Dusty, then climbed aboard. Ray got on Nick and I opened the pen gate for them, then the gate that led out to Blackie Butte and the BLM. “Take it slow, look around, you see someone you don’t know, don’t approach him. Observe only,” I said.
“What if he’s cutting our fence?”
“Pop off a round in the air. Try to chase him off. Then get out of there.”
Amelia said, “Daddy would shoot anybody cutting our fences.”
“Well, let’s not shoot anybody today, OK? I mean not unless you have to.”
“I thought you were going with me,” Ray said.
“I’ll be out a little later. Right now, your mom wants me to drive her into town.”
Jeanette came outside. “Mike, you ready?”
“Give me a second,” I said. I closed the gate behind Ray and Amelia, and watched as they made their way up the track, looking easy in the saddle, not surprising since both were practically born there.
“Mike,” Jeanette said.
“Yes ma’am, right away, ma’am,” I said, touching my hat to her.
A minute later, we were headed to town in Bob the pickup. “Road’s all dried out,” I said as I drove us off the Square C onto Ranchers Road.
“Yep,” Jeanette answered, then made a show of opening a folder to study the papers within. We didn’t share another word all the way to Jericho, which was nearly an hour away. Well, that’s kind of a Fillmore County thing, too. Shut up and drive.
5
Fillmore County is 5,500 square miles of big, or about the same size as the state of Connecticut. That New England state, however, has a population of 3.5 million people while the last census of Fillmore County listed us at 770. I thought that probably included some double-counting of the confusing Brescoe clan. What we lacked in people, we more than made up with livestock, which included, rounding off, 50,000 cattle, 15,000 sheep, 900 horses, 300 buffalo, and 125 pigs.