by Gwen Moffat
‘She knows something. Parents often maintain that their missing children are alive. It’s a defence mechanism. But those parents appear cool and calm, on the verge of stupor. There’s nothing like that about Edna; she’s certainly preoccupied and it may be with Shelley, but it’s not with the manner of her death. Edna’s breathing defiance, and she’s convinced that Shelley is alive. What’s the connection? Put it another way: why should she be defiant when she thinks Shelley is alive?’
Logan stopped and she turned her horse to face him. ‘No more tracks,’ he said cheerfully. ‘And Otis says they didn’t go through his gate so we got to start looking for them up these draws. There could be one explanation for Edna’s way of looking at it,’ he went on in the same tone. ‘It seems a bit too simple to me though. You got a man dead and his girl friend missing. I read somewhere that the first suspect in a murder is the husband or the wife. Perhaps that works for girl friends too. We’ll each take one side of this draw, look for tracks.’
He was gone, leaving her gaping, but only momentarily for the chestnut wanted to follow his horse, and she must take the other bank of the draw.
It took them half an hour to find the heifers. They brought them back through the foothills with Logan riding across the heads of the draws, chasing stray beasts downhill to Miss Pink who pushed them home along the trail. She was thinking that, but for the occasional passage of a helicopter, this was the West as she had envisaged it: the myth on its home ground. But the reality was more fantastic than the myth, given the purpose of the helicopters.
Logan came down the side of a draw, his horse sliding like a dog, chivvying a pair of heifers towards her. At the bottom he jumped the runnel and cantered diagonally up the far slope. He was wearing a stiff khaki coat which added to his width, and a knobbly black hat with ear muffs. He didn’t sit his nimble little bay like a rock but like another part of the animal, whether it was sliding downhill on its rump, or clawing upwards. That a horse could climb at all was fascinating to Miss Pink; for one to progress by upward leaps with a man on its back was incredible.
As they approached the ranch, pushing the heifers along a lane between jack fences, they saw a dark car working its way through the pot-holes towards the house.
‘Sheriff,’ Logan said tersely. He had sharp eyes.
She felt a thrill of excitement but, for the moment, the sheriff was an anti-climax. If you were working cattle everything else was subordinate, and by the time the heifers had been returned to their pasture, the police car was retreating down the drive. They were puzzled; whom had it dropped?
They put the horses in the barn and went in the kitchen to find it occupied by Ginny and Seale, in anorak and hat, her pack beside her chair, drinking beer from the can and regarding their entrance with smug triumph, a fact which Logan remarked immediately.
‘It’s early for beer. What happened?’ His eyes went to her pack.
Seale grinned. ‘You can all forget about that. The Colt’s lying in the snow in Sundance and no one saw it put there, and there are so many tracks, no one will ever know it was brought down and taken back again. I wiped it carefully and I wore gloves when I handled it the last time. Of course, it should have somebody’s prints on it, and it hasn’t. That’s too bad. Whose would those be?’
‘It belonged to Tye,’ Logan said. ‘He must have thought it sounded more impressive to pretend like he had a Magnum. Joe Bullard told us.’ He related their encounter with the party from the Lazy S.
Seale was suddenly wary. ‘Does this make any difference?’ she asked Miss Pink.
‘Not so far as we’re concerned, and providing you did put it back without being noticed. Circumstances have changed in that we know now that the only weapon near the body belonged to Tye and not to someone else. Perhaps no one else was there, apart from Shelley—’
‘Actually, someone was. You’d never guess what else has been found up in Sundance, about half a mile from the body. We wouldn’t have found it but for the dogs.’ Seale was staring at Logan. ‘A skinned bear.’
‘Skinned?’ Ginny repeated, while her son regarded Seale incredulously. The girl nodded. ‘And buried, with rocks on the top, and everything plastered with snow. But we’d seen the coyote tracks from the air as we came in. In fact, I thought the tracks were converging on the site of Tye’s body—everything looks the same from the air: like a map. There’s no relief. Then we landed. One of the forest rangers who was with us had a German Shepherd and it didn’t need any encouragement. It found the bear as soon as it was put on the tracks. But once I was down on the ground I realized that yesterday we weren’t anywhere near the bear’s body, so I wandered off until I found that crag where the tent was. Everything was covered by the new snow, of course, but when they brought the dog over, it found Tye’s body easily. Then another chopper came in with the Search and Rescue people, and more dogs, and you can’t imagine the confusion with people traipsing backwards and forwards between the two bodies: the bear and Tye. It was chaos. Dropping the gun was a piece of cake. I pushed it into the snow about a foot and then watched several people tramp over it. It hadn’t been found when I left. The dogs did find a rucksack, by the way; it was open, and about three hundred yards from Tye’s body, which means nothing because the scavengers must have moved it. There was nothing inside, but the dogs turned up bits of plastic and packaging all over the place. Clothing too; the coyotes would have pulled food and clothing out of the tent as well as from the rucksack.’
‘Was there no sign of a second person?’ Miss Pink asked. ‘Shelley was with Irving when they were going up the path towards Sundance.’
‘There’s absolutely no sign. For all that’s been found, so far as I can see, Shelley was never in Sundance. The sheriff was puzzled too.’ Seale grinned. ‘I got the impression he wanted to keep an eye on me, probably because I was up there yesterday, but after the dog found the bear’s body, he lost interest in me. I think things were piling up on him. And then, you know how people get excited and speculate, go off at half-cock? When we landed in Sundance and everyone was sure the dog had found a body, they leapt to the conclusion that it was Shelley. Well, so did I; I knew this wasn’t Tye’s body because there were rocks on top, and we were in the wrong place—but I just watched from the sidelines and kept quiet. When they uncovered the first piece of flesh—and you’ve no idea how like a human being a bear is, without its fur—someone shouted: “It’s her!” and the sheriff looked utterly appalled. I heard him say: “Who buried her?” It was more than he could handle. Then they discovered it was a bear and while they were all concentrating on it, I faded away and disposed of the Colt. They found Tye’s gunbelt, by the way.’
‘Gnawed?’ Miss Pink asked politely.
‘Gnawed by animals? I’ve no idea.’
‘Think about it. How did the belt look?’
‘Why, I—’ Seale studied Miss Pink’s face, and went on thoughtfully: ‘I remember someone shouting and holding it up … It was long; I mean: full-length, so he had to be holding it by one end, by the buckle, because momentarily I thought it was a snake, with a tapering tail, you see. The belt was undone, not gnawed. What’s significant about that?’
‘I’m not sure. Did they find another belt?’
‘Not before I left. They sent me back with Tye’s body. I mean, at the same time. I did hear another theory on the way home.’ She looked at Logan. ‘You’ll be there already.’ She turned to Miss Pink. ‘Well, perhaps you are too.’
Ginny said: ‘There’s no theory about it; it’s a fact. That bear were skinned by a poacher.’
No one showed surprise but Miss Pink murmured: ‘Or it was skinned so that the presence of a poacher should be implied,’ and she looked at Seale who said: ‘The police in the chopper were arguing that Tye shot and skinned the bear and then was shot himself. In other words, there were two poachers: Tye and one other, and they fell out.’
Logan snorted in astonishment. ‘Shot a grizzly with a Colt! A local man thought that? Where was
it shot?’
‘The carcass is in a bit of a mess; there’s a great wound in the chest: under the armpit, and up under the ribs too. It’s definitely not the track of a small bullet; it looks more as if the animals had been at the body before it was buried, but I didn’t have time to study it, let alone try to work things out; I was too concerned with getting rid of that Colt.’
‘Were the head and feet taken?’ Logan asked.
‘Oh, yes. Someone else had to be there, didn’t they, because they’d taken the skin? It couldn’t have been Shelley. What does a pelt weigh, Sim?’
‘Around two hundred pounds.’
‘That means there was a third person up there, with a pack-horse. Why are you frowning, Melinda?’
But Miss Pink had a question of her own: ‘What was done with the bear’s carcass?’
‘They’re going to bring that down for autopsy as well. The men that came back with me said that the bullet will be in the bear, and probably another in Tye’s body. There appears to be no doubt in their mind that he was murdered, and probably with the same weapon that killed the bear.’ Seale frowned. ‘So who fired Tye’s Colt, and what was he firing at?’
Miss Pink did not answer. Logan stretched luxuriously and smiled at Seale. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we got you back safe and sound and that old gun put where it came from. So now we’re back to scratch and the professionals are looking for Shelley, so there’s nothing we can do except get on with our own jobs. Now, when you were flying around, did you happen to see my cows?’
She regarded him in amazement but she said: ‘I knew you were going to ask that, and I did look, and I didn’t see any. Not one.’
‘Shoot! Not even that bunch you brought out of Loon yesterday? Didn’t you push them down Hell Roaring?’
‘Well, sort of; not far. Remember, we had Frank Patent with us, and we’d just found a body. Maybe I didn’t chase them far enough and they drifted back to Loon. From the air I could easily have missed them if they were in the spruce.’
‘And what about those Archie and me brought down off Wapiti? Didn’t you see anything along Cougar or around Cow Camp? No? So they’ve all drifted back. You can blame that on the choppers and goddam traffic on the roads. I reckon we should aim to get those cows down soon as we can. We better find out who’s available. How about you going over to the Trotter place when you’ve eaten, see if you can get Jed and Billy? Tell ’em we want to start the drive on Thursday.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Miss Pink said.
‘There’s no need for you both to go,’ said Logan.
Miss Pink smiled at him. ‘You’re only concerned about your cows, but a man is dead, a woman is missing, and someone’s killing grizzly bears illegally. It’s a good idea not to be on one’s own in this canyon, at least for the time being.’
Chapter 8
After lunch Seale caught and saddled the buckskin while Miss Pink watched without comment and wondered why they didn’t drive to the Trotter place. She was not left long in ignorance. As Seale swung herself into the saddle and led the way out of the yard, she said slyly: ‘I’ll show you how the locals go about their business when they don’t want to be seen.’
A path ran through the horse pasture to disappear in the gloom of pines that descended from Wapiti Ridge. The timber stopped suddenly a few hundred yards from Cougar Creek and, just inside the trees, far enough back for riders to be invisible from the road, but parallel to it, ran a trail that was obviously well-travelled, at least by animals. Seale said the timber was full of such paths: ‘They’re basically game trails, and game and predators like to see without being seen. Like some people,’ she added as they glimpsed a car through the pines and beyond the sage: red and blue lights on its roof. ‘Although,’ she added, ‘I came on this path mainly because of the Press. When I flew back in the chopper there were cars all over the road from here to Cow Camp, and I mean: all over. It’s slimy since the snow and some of the reporters must have two-wheel-drive. So I thought it would be more comfortable to ride to the Trotter place.’
There was no answer. The path was narrow and they rode in single file. Deliberately Seale drew the buckskin on to the verge and stopped. The chestnut came up and the riders regarded each other levelly.
‘Something wrong?’ Seale asked, adding drily: ‘I mean, something that I don’t know about.’
‘You have the facts,’ Miss Pink said, and then shook her head as if a technical discussion were beyond her. ‘I feel haunted,’ she confessed, ‘by feelings, atmosphere—a combination of intangible things. Look at this path, and this place. In ranching country you get the initial impression that there’s no privacy: everyone knows everyone else’s business, and obviously they have a grapevine. That would be the telephone, but telephone conversations can be overheard, cars can be observed on the road.… With a network of trails like this, through thick timber, a new dimension emerges …’ She flattened the chestnut’s mane and watched it spring upright again. ‘Alibis,’ she mused. ‘Alibis would involve relatives, and would be useless.’
‘You’ve decided that Tye wasn’t killed by a bear?’
‘Which bear? There were two—or are you suggesting that the one that confronted me yesterday got itself killed and skinned overnight?’
‘Of course not. The dead bear was buried before yesterday’s snow.’
‘I wonder if the autopsies could show that Tye and the bear were killed at roughly the same time. I imagine they were. The simplest explanation is that Tye was killed because he witnessed an illegal killing.’
‘But if Shelley was with him, then she must have been a witness too. Is that another thing bothering you? And is that why you wouldn’t let me see Jed on my own: you reckon someone has killed twice, and that he’ll keep killing to cover up the other deaths?’
‘I have no idea. We seem to be on the receiving end of a constant flow of information and none of it fits. At some point I’d expect to reach saturation level and then we might see a relationship between one person’s story and someone else’s. At the moment I realize I’m putting so much faith in the results of the autopsies that I wonder if I’m being naïve. The bodies were discovered almost too easily. I find that odd.’
‘As if the killer used someone else’s rifle?’
‘Something like that.’ Miss Pink lifted her reins. ‘See if you can get a good look at the Trotter tent, particularly their firearms, but don’t push it, and try to follow my lead.’
They took the next three miles at a canter, slowing only when brown canvas and a corral showed through the pines.
The Trotter place was not in a clearing; on the contrary its components looked as if they had been eased through the lodgepoles until they could be taken no further, then dumped. This was so in the case of the large, mud-coloured tent, evidently Army-surplus, and a small peeling caravan, once white, now splotched with moss and mildew. A stove pipe protruded from the tent’s roof, emitting a trace of smoke. The corral was merely a contraption of rails that spanned spaces between the pines. An old red pick-up stood beside the tent and there were two thin horses in the corral. There was no sign of people until they rode to the front of the tent and a woman parted the entrance flaps.
Mae Trotter was big-breasted and narrow-hipped: factors enhanced by the ubiquitous Levis and coarse blue shirt but whose femininity was belied by her face. She had the startling features seen in some old daguerreotypes of women on the California Trail: heavy, fearful and masculine. Blonde hair straggled from under her felt hat but did nothing to render her less mannish, although there was an incongruity here. Seale had said Mae was around thirty but no man that young had a face as worn as hers.
‘Hi.’ Her greeting was automatic, and Seale’s introduction casual. Miss Pink, dismounting, was aware that she was being closely scrutinized. They draped their reins over a rail.
‘Jed around?’ Seale asked.
‘They’re up back with the cows. They shouldn’t be long. Come inside.’
The inter
ior of the tent was surprisingly warm, but dark as a cave. Miss Pink sensed that Seale, who had preceded her, was no longer standing and, peering and groping, she discovered a plank which she trusted was supported at each end. She seated herself gingerly beside Seale and looked about her, trying to identify objects in the gloom.
The focal point was a flickering line of scarlet. ‘You’ve got a new stove,’ Seale observed. ‘It’s warm as toast in here.’
‘It’s not sitting proper.’ There was a note of pride in Mae’s voice. ‘That door ain’t hanging right. We’ll get some bricks, make a level foundation for it.’
‘I wish I had something like that in the bunkhouse. I’m going to freeze in winter.’
Mae moved a saucepan across the top of the stove. ‘Jed got a good price for some coyote skins.’ Miss Pink guessed this was a euphemism for elk, otherwise you’d need so many skins to raise the money to buy such a stove as this that the project would be uneconomical. On the other hand, one or two elk … As her eyes became accustomed to the dimness, she tried to pick out other objects, but the tent was a cluttered confusion without colour and, mostly, without form. She saw a boot on the ground—there was no floor, only the trampled earth—a bent cardboard plate, the corner of a quilt which might be hanging from a bed. ‘Is that patchwork?’ she asked in wonder.
