by Julie Weston
BASQUE MOON
A NELLIE BURNS AND MOONSHINE MYSTERY
BASQUE MOON
JULIE WESTON
FIVE STAR
A part of Gale, Cengage Learning
Copyright © 2016 by Julie Weston
Five Star™ Publishing, a part of Cengage Learning, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Weston, Julie W., 1943– author.
Title: Basque moon : a Nellie Burns and Moonshine mystery / by Julie Weston.
Description: First Edition. | Waterville, Maine : Five Star, a part of Cengage Learning, [2016]
Identifiers: LCCN 2016007340 (print) | LCCN 2016016687 (ebook) | ISBN 9781432832988 (hardcover) | ISBN 1432832980 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781432832933 (ebook) | ISBN 143283293X (ebook)
eISBN-13: 978-1-4328-3293-3 eISBN-10: 1-43283293-X
Subjects: | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3623.E872 B37 2016 (print) | LCC PS3623.E872 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016007340
First Edition. First Printing: August 2016
This title is available as an e-book.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4328-3293-3 ISBN-10: 1-43283293-X
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Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 20 19 18 17 16
For Melanie and David
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Beginning in the early 1950s, my family drove from northern Idaho through the Stanley Basin in central Idaho every year on our way to Sun Valley. The Sawtooth Mountains startled this girl from an Idaho mining town where the mountains were rounded and shorn of trees. The rocky heights, the snow chutes, the saw teeth seeming to rip into the blue sky were nothing like I’d ever seen. The Salmon River tumbled between green verges and cattle appeared painted on the foreground. Wildflowers bloomed and sometimes we saw sandhill cranes, their awkward gait and chuckling sounds reminding us of creatures out of time.
Since then, my husband and I have spent many days and nights exploring the whole Basin and we have visited several of the lakes. We have traveled the Fourth of July Road and hiked up to the Fourth of July Lake. These settings struck me as perfect territory for a photographer—as it is for Gerry—and another Nellie and Moonshine story took form.
Both the Basin and the Wood River Valley have been known for the masses of sheep that graze in the meadows, hills, and mountains of the area. In the early years, Basque men were lured to the western United States by the discoveries of gold and silver. They transitioned into sheepherding and they and their descendants and others from the French–Spanish border became valuable employees of the mostly Scottish sheep ranchers. Although a lonely occupation, Basque herders were once synonymous with sheep tending. All summer, they would travel the back country of Idaho, grazing their sheep along canyons, mountainsides, and byways until fall. They bunked in canvas-or tin-covered wagons drawn by horses and referred to as sheep camps. We feel fortunate to have Basque friends who have assisted with knowledge about traditions, food, dogs, and language.
Both writers and readers helped me with the events in Basque Moon. Mary Murfin Bayley, Charlene Finn, Belinda Anderson, and Alice Calvert read and critiqued this manuscript. Without their assistance and advice, I may never have found an ending to the story.
Again, I thank Five Star Publishing and Tiffany Schofield for believing in the fiction of the West. Hazel Rumney continues to be a star editor with an appreciation of Idaho and its environs as well as a sharp eye and comprehensive knowledge, not only of writing, but of the characters in this book. The Regional History Department of the Community Library in Ketchum, Idaho, is my primary source for newspapers in the 1920s in the Wood River Valley and an extensive collection of historical books and photographs, including books about the Basque language and traditions in Idaho.
This past year, my son-in-law David Andersen, also a photographer, gave me his Premo camera, the exact camera that Nellie used in her photographic work in Idaho. His description of this camera when I worked on Basque Moon near the beginning helped me to visualize how Nellie would do her work. My photography expert and husband, Gerry Morrison, once again helped me with the mechanics and details of taking photographs with a large-format camera. Any errors in technique and translation, however, are mine. I also value Gerry’s willingness to read the manuscript in its many permutations, as well as his support in this endeavor to place Nellie and Moonshine in a world we both know and love.
CHAPTER 1
Lulu spent half her time directing tourists in the mechanics of driving their automobiles backward over Galena Pass. The steep road, dirt and gravel in summer, hugged the curves of the mountainside, and the drop-off to the valley hundreds of feet below frightened more than one brave man and myriads of women who were unused to riding in a horseless carriage on anything other than a flat city street. Convincing the men that most autos wouldn’t make it over the pass facing front was a difficult sell, until she had to send someone up with water and a tow back to her store at the base of the pass for a hefty price. Whatever the market would bear, her shopkeeper father had advised before he disappeared into a snowstorm in the winter of ’18 in the Stanley Basin of Idaho. That was the fifth winter Lulu had spent with him at the Galena Store, a lonely, Spartan existence without the summer travelers and the miners who once peopled the town of Galena.
The women drivers accepted the advice more readily, confirming Lulu’s opinion of the basic difference between the sexes: Women were smarter.
Not everyone drove. Basque sheepherders rode horses or walked with their dogs and bands of sheep. In exchange for corral space for a few days in bad weather, the Basque agreed to stay far enough back in the woods and meadows to keep down the dust and smell and noise on their spring trip up and fall trip back. Lulu didn’t hold with the local cattlemen, that sheep were “maggots of the range.” Cattle were a sight smellier than sheep, and those big cowpies drew flies and poisoned the creeks. There was room enough for all in the Boulder, White Cloud, and Sawtooth ranges and the big spaces in between.
Every summer brought something new. One year a Model T drove right off the edge of the road and made two grooves all the way to the bottom, just as if the driver had steered his way down. And maybe he had. He lived.
Another summer, it snowed up until the tenth of July, stopped, then started up again around the twelfth of the same month. Business was really bad that year. The road never dried out and even her team of horses had trouble pulling autos from the gumbo that mired tires to the top of the wheel wells. The Basque lost sheep right and left to the coyotes; same with the cowboys and their cattle. Summer grazing in the highlands never took hold.
In the summer of 1923, several events took place that were a shade out of the ordinar
y. It wasn’t until the summer was over that Lulu began to think of them grouped under the heading of the summer of the Basque moon. A gunfight wasn’t all that usual anymore, but it wasn’t unusual either. Same for a grudge-match between the cowboys and Basque sheepmen. More tourists than usual embarked on campouts in the mountains and Lulu’s business soared. She sold more sugar, beans, coffee, smoked bacon, flour, and tourist trinkets than two summers’ worth, and travelers filled the beds in the lodge almost every night.
Several packers made Galena their headquarters for the dudes who wanted to ride horses and experience life in the open, “just like real cowboys” one of them said. She couldn’t remember which group ran into real trouble, whether it was Rob’s or Luke’s or Joe’s, but no one could forget Sheriff Charlie Azgo’s disgust with the whole thing. He almost up and quit at the end when the perpetrator got off Scot-free—well, almost—and Charlie probably would have thrown that star of his at the county fathers, the few of them that were left, if he wasn’t responsible for helping to raise two boys in the fall and needed the job. Even so, the camping “experience” gave Lulu the idea to think about a dude ranch of her own.
What stuck in her mind was the appearance of Nellie Burns, the woman photographer from Ketchum, along with her dog, Moonshine, and that camera of hers. The summer would have been boring without them, Lulu supposed, but sometimes boring was better.
“I’m Nellie Burns.” This announcement came from a young woman standing at the counter in front of Lulu. She was pretty in a town sort of way, wore pants, which most women didn’t, even when they intended to camp alongside the road, and she stood as straight as any soldier who had come through Idaho during the Great War. Her high cheekbones and widow’s peak would help her age well, and her rounded jawline gave her a soft look.
“Howdy, Nellie Burns. I’m Lulu. I own this place.”
A wide smile showed good teeth. “I know. I thought you might have a message for me. I’m supposed to meet Gwynn Campbell here. Has he come yet?”
“Ole man Campbell? Can he still get around? I heard he almost died of pneumonia last winter. Thought he’d give up his sheep outfit.”
“No, he recovered, and he assured me that I could spend several weeks with one of his sheepherders in the summer range. I plan to take photographs of life in a sheep camp. I’m on assignment.” The photographer might have been announcing the awarding of a grand prize at the state fair. “I’m supposed to meet him here and then he’ll take me across Galena and up Fourth of July Creek.”
Lulu craned her neck to look outside. “Where’s your gear?”
“It’s out with my dog. He’s guarding it for me.” Nellie pointed to the door. “Not that I think anyone would steal it. I don’t want anyone to touch it, is all.”
A growl and a series of barks confirmed Nellie’s statement. She strode out of the store and Lulu followed.
“Moonshine. What is it?”
A man in a new Stetson, completely out of place above his grizzled face and worn clothes, stood beside a Model T drawn up next to her battered Oldsmobile. The black Labrador dog stood in front of a wood case, three bags, and a folded-up tripod, his feet braced, his teeth bared. “You ought to teach your dog some manners, Miss.”
Nellie blushed. “You ought to mind your own business and stay away from my things.”
“Ha, ha, ha!” The man took off his hat, revealing a greasy flap of hair, dirty blond in color. “Feisty, ain’t ya?” He took a long step onto the porch of the store. “Hiya, Lulu. I need some stores to take back to the Basin with me.”
“Sure thing, Dick. Round ’em up on the counter there. I’ll take cash this time.” She stepped down to stand next to Nellie, ignoring the scowl the man directed at her.
“That your auto, Nellie?” She tipped her head in the direction of the Oldsmobile.
“In a manner of speaking. It belongs to Rosy Kipling. He’s back East and said I could use it, at least until it falls apart, which it may do any day now.”
“What do you plan on doing with the auto if you’re going up into the mountains?”
“Gwynn said he’d see it got back to town,” Nellie said, “unless you’ll let me leave it parked here somewhere.” She looked around for an out-of-the-way place, but the store and lodge had been built before automobiles appeared. The hitching post would have held a dozen animals, and maybe a wagon or two, but only a few automobiles. Out-buildings crowded close around the store. A barn, a tool shed, what might have been or still was an outhouse, a corral that was empty at the moment. “Could I leave it there in the corral?”
“Sure, if you don’t mind sheep piling up and over it and dogs makin’ themselves comfortable on that cloth top there. Might come out smellin’ a mite ripe.” Lulu stepped back onto the porch. “Got a customer I need to watch. Wait ’til Gwynn gets here and we’ll talk about what accommodation I could make. I’d have to figure out what to charge.”
Nellie’s expression fell. “I couldn’t afford much. Maybe it would be best if the auto went back to town. It’s just—I might want to leave—there’s no place—”
Lulu disappeared into the store.
“Well, Moonshine, here we are. Do you suppose I’ll really get paid for this ‘assignment?’ I must have sounded like a . . . a man. ‘Pride goeth before a fall’ as they say.” She stooped to put her arms around the dog, who rested his muzzle on her shoulder. It was then she noticed a woman passenger in the Model T. Nellie waved and said hello. The woman didn’t respond except to turn her face the other way. The auto windows were grimy, as if they’d gone through a dust-bath, so Nellie didn’t get a good look at the woman other than to note pale hair and a profile that could have been carved on a Greek statue, so classic were its lines.
Moonshine left his guard post and smelled the tires of the Model T. A dog, who must have been asleep in the back of the auto, started up a ruckus, barking, snarling, and pawing at the windows. The woman shouted, “Shut your mouth, Cowpie.” Her voice carried a southern drawl.
“Moonie. Come back here.” The dog barked at the auto and returned to Nellie’s side.
A pickup truck rattled up to the Galena Store. Gwynn, looking older than God, or maybe like God himself, sat in the driver’s seat, his arm gesticulating out the window. A darker-skinned man occupied the seat next to Gwynn, crouching low, his hands in front of his face to ward off what he probably thought was going to be a crash into the store’s porch. Nellie thought so, too, and jumped aside, dragging her camera pack with her. The tripod could be replaced. Amidst a screech of brakes, a hurricane of dust, and a “Goddamnit, you—” the truck stopped a few inches shy of Nellie’s baggage. The tripod escaped harm. Spryer than Nellie would have expected, the old sheep rancher jumped down from the running board and beamed at her.
“Lassie. You made it! I like a woman who arrives on time.” When he pulled off his hat, greased around the headband and mottled with years of handling sheep, his white hair sprang up. “If you’re all ready, we’ll pile your gear into the back and get you up and over the Pass. There’s been bad doings up there, and the sooner I get there, the sooner it’ll stop.” Gwynn’s Scottish brogue was deep and strong, in spite of the fact that he had lived in Idaho for forty of his sixty-odd years.
“What kind of bad doings? Sheep rustlers?”
“Lulu already tell you? Those goddamned cowmen think they own the high country. There ain’t no fences and I’ll be damned if I’ll kow-tow to ’em.” A roar of laughter softened his leathery face. “Kow-towed. Get it?”
Nellie smiled. Last winter, Gwynn had given her and a fellow photographer in Twin Falls, Jacob Levine, a bad time and then nearly died of pneumonia. The old man had his faults, one of which had been to try and control a strong-minded daughter, but he had paid dearly—losing his daughter and nearly losing his two grandsons for good. Ever since Nellie had helped arrange the future return of the boys to Ketchum, Gwynn had taken her under his wing, trying to stay on her good side.
“I’m re
ady, but my camera goes inside on my lap, not in the back. And where are Moonshine and I going to sit? You’ve got a passenger.”
“That’s just Alphonso. He can ride in the rear or hang onto the running board. I’m takin’ him up to the camp to replace Domingo, who’s gone ’round the bend, accordin’ to the supply man.”
“ ‘Around the bend?’ Died?”
“Nope. Just lost his bearings. Too much loneliness. Occupational hazard.” Gwynn picked up Nellie’s bags and placed them in the truck bed, sandwiched between boxes and two bags of flour. A strong medicinal smell hovered over one of the boxes.
Nellie called for her dog to climb in the front and she followed, settling herself on the seat shyly vacated by Alphonso, who dipped his head as he swept his hat off, letting his long black hair fall over his eyes. The same sour odor penetrated the sheepskin covers. It was enough to make her stomach turn, so she breathed through her mouth, hoping she’d get used to it. Moonie sat between her legs on the floor, his head resting on her knee.
Lulu came out on the porch. “Hey, Gwynn. You goin’ up to set them cattlemen straight?”
“Straight, no. Crooked yes. I’ll bend ’em around some of them lodgepole pines up there, goddamned thieving, sons of—”
“Watch your language, Gwynn. You got a lady next to you and one here on the porch. I won’t tolerate all that swearin’ and cussin’ around here. Tourists don’t like it.”
Nellie would not have thought it possible, but the sheepman blushed. “Sorry, Lulu. I forgot you been tryin’ to turn the Wild West into a sissy picnic.” He pointed to the Oldsmobile. “I’ll get that rattle-trap outta here when I come back with Domingo. He can drive it to town and leave it at Bock’s Boardinghouse for our famous photographer here.”
Lulu spoke to Nellie. “You can leave it here for a while, if you want. Most of the sheep have already come through. Then if you change your mind. . . .” She let the sentence drift and walked up to the open door of the truck. “But, I’ll need the key, honey. Can’t leave it out there in front like that.”
