by G. M. Ford
I thought about it. “I guess, in this case, that might be true,” I allowed.
She thought it over. “This is about Gordon, isn’t it?” she asked finally.
“Yes,” I said. “I think it is.”
“You think those Keeler folks had something to do with . . . what happened?”
“Yeah . . . I’m pretty much sure of it.”
She looked over at the lawyer. “Draw up the paperwork, Fred,” she told him. “I’ll sign it, first thing tomorrow.”
Rachel’s landline never goes to voice mail.
Tonight, she picked up on the second ring.
“Hey,” she said. “How goes the road trip?”
“Getting a little prickly,” I admitted.
“Doesn’t it always?” she asked.
“If I’m doing my job right.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“I’m about to really piss off a bunch of people.”
She caught my tone. “Dangerous people?”
“People who stand to lose everything,” I said.
“Those are, by definition, dangerous people.”
“I’m going to be here for a while.”
“What’s ‘a while’?”
“A week . . . maybe two.”
“I’ll miss you.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled, “. . . me too.”
“Everything okay?”
I thought it over. “First thing in the morning, things are gonna get un-okay in a big hurry.”
“Be careful. I need you back.”
I said I would, and then we spent another ten minutes kissy-facing through the rest of the conversation, until I heard Keith futzing with the motel room door trying to get in and I told her I had to go.
“Be careful,” she said again and then hung up.
I started the Blazer as Keith shoveled the last of the apple strudel Pop-Tart into his mouth, dusting the sugar from his fingers. “Where we headed?” he wanted to know.
“Gonna see a man about a ranch,” I said.
At that moment, looking across the seat at him sitting there with crumbs on his chin, I realized that recent events had perhaps pushed our little quest into areas that the kid hadn’t bargained for, so I slid the Blazer to the curb and jammed it into park. “Listen . . . Keith . . . things are about to get seriously hairy.”
“Like what?” he asked.
“We’re about to stick our heads into the lion’s mouth, and I’m not sure this is quite what you signed up for.”
“I signed up to find out what happened to Gordon Stanley.”
“So far we’ve managed to make a few waves. Sometime later today it’s about to become a tsunami.”
“What are you trying to tell me?”
“I’m trying to tell you that thus far this has been a bit of a lark, compared to what it’s about to become. Up till now, as far as you’re concerned, it’s been detect in the morning and bounce around all night with Ginny.”
His face hardened. “Something wrong with that?”
“I think things are about to get way too tense for romance.”
“What say we let me be the judge of that?” he snapped.
Lust had him by the throat. I could feel it. There was no dealing with him on the subject of Ginny. Might as well be talking to a goddamn stone.
“What say we don’t put Irene and Ginny in any unnecessary danger?” I tried.
He didn’t want to hear about it. He nodded at my semi-useless arm. “You got that on a date with Irene, didn’t you? Maybe you ought to practice what you preach,” he suggested.
“I’m serious,” I said.
“I thought we were going to see a man about a ranch.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out Fred Simmons’s business card.
“Here,” I said, handing him the card. “Punch this address into the GPS.”
“Initial on the red. Sign on the yellow,” Fred Simmons said.
From the look of the lawyer’s satchel face, he’d been up all night drawing up the paperwork. I got busy scribbling in all the proper places.
“There’s gonna be a shitstorm . . . ya know that, doncha?” Fred said.
“I expect you’re right,” I said.
“For the record,” he said, “this transaction is taking place against my professional advice. Far as I’m concerned, it’s nuts.”
“Maybe you ought to tell Sarah Jane,” I suggested.
“Believe me, son, I tried. But once that woman makes up her mind, you might as well be talking to the wind.”
I flipped a page and went back to scribbling.
“You know anything about running a cattle ranch?” he asked.
“Nope. But I know a few people who do.”
“People willing to put their asses on the line for ya?”
“Guess I’m about to find out,” I said.
“About five minutes after I file these papers down at the courthouse, the grapevine is gonna be buzzin like a hornet’s nest.”
“I know.”
“You ain’t gonna have a lot of allies around this town. Most everybody round here sees this Keeler project as an economic savior. They’re not gonna take kindly to you gumming up the works.”
“I’m a stranger in a strange land,” I said as I signed the bottom of the last page.
“What you are now is the executive director of The Flying H Corporation. You have an option to buy the ranch at the specified price, anytime within the next one hundred and twenty days, during which time you will hold full powers of attorney for both Olley and Sarah Jane Hardvigsen.”
I looked up. “Why power of attorney?” I asked.
“Cause those Keeler folks . . . once they get wind of this . . . they’re gonna have lawyers crawlin over this document like cockroaches in a corn crib. Only way to keep it airtight is for Sarah Jane to make you her executor. Fewer loopholes in probate law. Best of all, it moves any action from civil court to probate court, which, around here, is a circuit court, and’s backed up the better part of a year. They couldn’t even get a preliminary hearing until next fall.”
“Can we find her a condo or something here in town?”
“Already did. Got her a furnished house three blocks from the hospital.”
I looked over at Keith, who was dozing in a battered Morris chair.
“Good,” I said. “That’s good.” I stood up. “Take your time filing the papers. I’ve got a few things I’d like to do before the shit hits the fan.”
“Gotta be filed today. It’s the law.”
“Late today.”
“That’ll work,” he told me.
“You get that other paperwork I asked for?”
He pulled open the top drawer of his desk and produced a fistful of government forms. “She’s gonna hate this,” he said.
“I’ve got full power of attorney. Right?”
He grudgingly nodded.
“Then let’s fill out the damn forms.”
The Future Home of the World Famous Eagle Talon Casino and Lodge was a veritable beehive of activity. Out in the middle of the site the EPA had two giant yellow backhoes digging eight-foot trenches, at six-foot intervals. They had recruited an army of interns, most likely local college students, and had them screening everything that came out of the ground, like some giant archeological dig.
Bain and his pet Indian must have had the morning off. The only two Keeler thugs I recognized were the car creepers from the night before last. I drove right by the indolent collection, and bounced the Blazer down to the Nez Perce encampment. Keith and I got out and made our way over to the fire. I sat down on a rock next to Herbert Lean Elk. He reached out and shook my hand.
“You know where I can hire any ranch hands?” I asked.
“What ranch you got in mind?” he asked.
I nodded my head toward the top of the butte. “The Flying H.”
“Sarah Jane got no—”
I cut him off. “I’m running the place for a while,” I s
aid.
“You buy it?”
“Got me an option to buy,” I said. “And full power of attorney.”
He took a moment to digest the information. Looked over at the Keeler group.
“They know about this?”
“Not yet.”
His eyes crinkled in amusement. “They gonna shit.” He shook his head. “This ranch work . . . this for pay, or you lookin for indigenous volunteers?”
“I’ll pay the going rate.”
He broke into a small smile. “In that case, I believe I can help you out. Same boys used to work for Olley and Sarah Jane before the money run out. They know the place backwards and forwards.”
“First thing tomorrow?”
“Bright and early.”
I handed him a piece of motel stationery with my cell phone number.
“Have em call me when they’re on the way.”
Herbert Lean Elk pocketed the paper.
I leaned in close to Herbert. “I hear The Flying H’s got a big-time varmint problem,” I said.
“Ya hear that, do ya?”
“I was thinking that if these hands had guns . . . maybe they ought to bring them along. You know . . . just in case we run into any . . .”
“Varmints,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“These are ranch hands, Leo.” He threw his eyes over at the Keeler group. “Not roughnecks like those guys. Don’t want none of our boys hurt,” he said. “We lose enough of them to drugs and alcohol. Don’t need to lose em any other way.”
I said I understood.
“Tribal Council’s real touchy,” Herbert warned. “That boy . . . Tommy Lighthorse . . . the one that Pawnee Dexter beat the hell out of . . . there were those on the council wanted to tell us to back off. To just let them build their damn casino and forget about it, they said.”
“Sometimes you gotta make a stand,” I said.
“This is starting to sound like a bad western movie,” Herbert said solemnly.
“Still don’t see why we can’t stay in town,” Keith groused.
“Cause we’ve got us a cattle ranch to run,” I said, with considerably more gusto than I actually felt. “Can’t do that from town, can we?”
“Don’t mean we got to sleep out there.”
I stashed the two armament bags where the spare tire used to be, pulled the carpet back over them, and threw my overnight bag on top.
“This is gonna get ugly,” I said as I walked around to the driver’s side. “These folks aren’t gonna take this lying down. They’re gonna come at us with everything they’ve got.” I waved a hand over the Holiday Inn parking lot. “This just makes it too damn easy for em,” I said. “They know which room we’re in. They know what we’re driving. Let’s at least make em work a little bit.”
We were faced off across the top of the car. The minute I’d told him we were checking out of the motel and moving our base of operations out to The Flying H, he went all sullen on me. Lust is the mind killer. I think it was Mary Poppins said that.
I pulled open the driver’s door. The digital dashboard clock read 3:42.
I swung up into the seat. “I’m guessing that, sometime in the next hour or so, some pretty pissed-off rednecks are gonna come stomping around here looking for us. Probably a good idea we make ourselves a tad harder to find.”
Keith hesitated. Trying to decide whether or not he was going to get in.
I decided to help. “Listen, kid . . .”
“Keith. My name is Keith.”
I heaved a sigh. “Listen, Keith. Maybe it’s time for you to get off the bus,” I said. “I’ll understand. Believe me; I get it. This thing has gotten a whole lot stranger than either of us bargained for.” I threw a hand into the air. “As of tomorrow morning, I’m running a friggin cattle ranch. How weird is that?”
He didn’t say anything. Just got in and buckled up.
Keith stayed in the Blazer, ear glued to his cell phone, while I went into the Home Depot and bought a six-foot length of chain that could have towed an aircraft carrier, and a high-tensile carbon steel lock.
Same thing at Arrowhead Sporting Goods, where I bought four infrared game trail cameras, two rolls of electrical tape, and a pair of cheap binoculars. Only, by then, he’d moved into the backseat, so’s he could be more amorous than just mumbling “me too” every minute and a half or so.
He was still at it when I stopped the Blazer just inside the gate of The Flying H and retrieved my newly purchased gear from the rear of the rig.
I found a sturdy little mesquite bush about ten yards inside the gate and stuffed one of the game cameras down into the center. After a couple of misaligned trial photos, some serious limb pruning, and a mile or so of electrical tape, I was satisfied that the camera was more or less invisible and that anything coming through The Flying H gate, day or night, was destined to be recorded for posterity.
I chained and locked the gate behind us and climbed back into the driver’s seat. Anybody wanting to visit us tonight was going to have to walk the better part of three miles over high desert, on what was rapidly turning into a dark, cloudy night. Way I saw it, that amounted to advantage number one for the good guys.
About a mile and a half later, I stopped next to a little grove of scrub oaks. The ranch road looped north from here, doubling back toward the jagged peaks of the Idaho Panhandle in the foreground, and the ominous, snowcapped spires of the Rocky Mountains way out at the edges of the horizon.
The early evening air was thick with the promise of rain as I moved through and around the scraggly oaks, looking for the right spot for a camera. Turns out cameras and trees have something in common. Both are best approached with two working hands. Since my dog-chewed arm was barely functional, it took quite a while and a goodly bit of piteous groaning to mount a pair of cameras. One infrared, motion-sensing electronic eye facing in each direction. Getting them coming and going.
By the time I crawled back into the cab, Keith was off the phone.
“What’s the point of all that?” he wanted to know.
“This could end up being an ‘our word against theirs’ kind of thing,” I said. “I’m thinking a few extra pair of eyes on our side might be a help.”
He grunted and looked out the side window for the rest of the trip to the Hardvigsen house. I drove around the house and unloaded the gear onto the back porch. “I still don’t get it,” Keith grumbled. “What can we do out here that we can’t do in town?” He pulled his bag out of the car and slammed the rear door.
“We can give these yahoos a chance to do something stupid, without endangering anybody but ourselves,” I said.
“So . . . that’s our mission? Goad the locals into doing something dumb?”
“You got a better idea?” I asked. “State casino licenses and stupid are more or less mutually exclusive.”
He looked at me like I was speaking Farsi, so I kept talking.
“These guys have risked everything they own on a single roll of the dice. If everything goes according to plan, they end up with more money than some countries. If there’s a fly in the ointment . . . well, then things slow way down, and the slower things get, the more money it costs them . . . money I don’t think they have.”
“So . . . what you’re saying then is that what we’re doing is leaving these people no choice but to come after us?”
“Like I said . . . I’m willing to listen to other ideas.”
The Blazer’s engine was ticking like a metronome as it cooled. A northerly breeze was beginning to stir bits of straw littering the yard. Somewhere in the distance a bovine bawled.
“I thought we came out here to find out what happened to Gordon Stanley,” he said after a while. “I mean . . . we pretty much know who took his money and why . . . like, shouldn’t it be the police who take things over from here?”
I nearly laughed out loud. “In case you forgot . . . Deputy Rockland Moon is the local police,” I said.
Nuff said. Ev
en as horny and out of his mind as he was, there was no way he could imagine getting any help from that quarter.
“Well, then . . . maybe we’ll just have to be content to know more or less what happened to him and let it go at that.”
I unzipped my overnight bag, rummaged around until I found what I was looking for, and pulled a manila folder out. I set the folder on the hood of the car and leafed through the contents until I came to the picture of Gordy’s back. I slid it out and handed it to Keith.
He looked at the photo, then uncomprehendingly up at me and then back to the photo. “Is that . . . ?” he asked.
I nodded. “Somebody I know . . . somebody with formal medical training . . . she thinks the scars were caused by repeated whippings.”
He tried to look away. Tried to banish the image from his mind, but just couldn’t do it. His eyes kept flitting back to the photo, etching the horror onto his psyche.
“If possible, I gotta know who did that to him,” I said.
He marinated the idea for a minute or so. Then looked me in the eye.
“Long as ‘if possible’ doesn’t mean ‘even if it gets both of us killed.’ ”
I gave it some thought. When you roll into a strange town and find conflict under every rock, you gotta ask yourself what it is you’re trying to prove. Was I looking for justice, or looking to justify my own existence? Wondering what money had done to Gordon, or what it had done to me? Tell the truth, I wasn’t sure anymore.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” I said.
I returned the photos to one gym bag and opened up another. I set the .38 snub-nosed and two full boxes of ammo on the hood of the car. “I was you,” I said, “I’d either hitchhike back into town and play kissy-face with my girlfriend, or I’d load that Smith and Wesson and keep it in my pocket at all times.”
He didn’t agree to anything. But then again, he didn’t leave either.
Amazing what guilt will do.
The Indian ponies were all named Kawasaki. I don’t know what the hell I was expecting, but it wasn’t four ATVs strapped to the back of a flatbed trailer. Hadn’t expected to see Herbert Lean Elk either, but he was the first one out of the truck, just after five-thirty the next morning.
