“Yes,” I said, “I’m Josh. The guys call me Cowboy.”
I rubbed my nose like it itched and kept my hand in front of my mouth. It was the only thing I could think of to hide my bleeding lip.
“Stephanie Becker.” She held out a piece of paper. “My phone number. Can we get together this weekend?”
I took it. There was more hooting from the guys behind me waiting to get off the ice. I turned around and shut them up with a dirty look.
“That’d be great. But the team’s going on a road trip for some out-of-town games,” I said.
“We don’t get back until late Saturday. And I promised my parents I would drive out to the ranch to visit all day Sunday.”
“Monday then?” she asked. “Please? Call me on Sunday night if you can. We really need to talk.”
“About what?” I asked.
“It’s so crazy I can’t tell you unless we have lots of time.”
“After practice today? I can meet you at McDonald’s.”
She shook her head no. Her eyes were a pale, pale blue. They looked pretty with her blond hair. Very pretty.
“I can’t right now,” she said. “I’m supposed to get back to my folks’ ranch.”
She lived on a ranch too? I liked her even more.
“Promise you’ll call me Sunday night,” she said. “I want to talk as soon as possible.”
Like I was going to say no?
“Sure,” I said, “Sunday night. We’ll get together on Monday.”
But, as it turned out, Monday was too late.
Chapter Four
“Tell you what, Joshua,” Dad said, “you won’t find any place in the world prettier than this.”
“Yup,” I said, blowing on my hands to keep them warm.
It was Sunday afternoon. Sunday mornings on the ranch were for church and family, and I had enjoyed the peace and quiet after the road trip. Now Dad and I were on horseback in the bright sun. We had ridden to the top of a hill and were looking down on the valley. Dad was right. It was pretty.
Our ranch was about a half-hour drive southeast of the city of Kamloops, the biggest city in the interior mountains of British Columbia. The ranch covered most of the bottomlands of the valley. It also stretched high into the hills where we were sitting on our horses. There were bigger ranches around, but not many. We had three thousand head of cattle on over fifty thousand acres. Our work crew ranged from twenty to forty cowboys, depending on the time of year.
It had been a light year for snow, and most of the ground was exposed. As far as we could see, pine trees dotted the hills like dark green crayons standing tall on rolling brown paper. Behind the hills the peaks of the mountains cut against the blue bowl of the sky. They weren’t as big and impressive as some of the Rocky Mountains farther east, but they were still pretty.
“Son,” Dad said as we admired the view, “I’d like to pass all this on to you someday.
I sure hope you make this ranch your home when you finish with hockey.”
My horse stamped the ground. It wanted to keep moving. The air was cool, and I could see the horse’s breath as it snorted.
Dad grinned. “But I hope you play hockey for a long time before you get back here.”
“Me too,” I said. “I think if I can keep near the top of the scoring race, I’ll have a real good chance at making the Sabres next fall.”
“It seems like it’s going well,” he said. “But your mother fussed over you so much this morning, we really haven’t had a chance to talk.”
“It’s been a pretty good season,” I told him. “You probably heard the out-of-town games on the radio.”
“Three games, three wins,” he said. “And four goals and six assists for you. Sure, I’ve been listening.”
Dad moved his horse forward. I stayed beside him as we followed a wide path down the hill. I was as big as Dad now. In the saddle, all I had to do was look over to see his face at my level.
Under his cowboy hat, he has gray in his black hair. He also has deep wrinkles around his eyes. Except for the gray and the wrinkles, we look close to the same. He has a bigger nose than I do—almost too big—but his face is wide, so it seems the right size. Mom teases us about our big dimples when we smile.
“What’s going on with Luke Zannetti?” he asked. “It sounds like the guy can’t do anything right.”
Without thinking, I licked my lip. It was still sore where he had punched me earlier in the week.
“Luke’s played better,” I said. “But his head is so big, he won’t talk to anyone. But then, he never has. You know that.”
“Remember that, son,” Dad said. “You can be the best hockey player in the world, but it’s who you are that counts.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“They made him team captain because he’s older. They made you assistant captain because they respect you,” he said. “They also voted you MVP last year because they respect you more than him. Don’t lose that respect.”
I tilted my cowboy hat back and scratched my head. “Dad?”
Our horses picked their way down the hill. I swayed in the saddle with the movement.
“Yes?”
“Each of the last four times I’ve visited the ranch, you’ve said that same thing.”
He laughed. “And I’ll keep saying it. It’s part of my job as your father.”
He pointed toward the top of another hill. “Let’s go that way. I want to check on Big Boy. I wanted him to get some exercise, so we’ve got him fenced in with a small herd.”
Big Boy was our world-class Limousin bull. Ranchers from all over paid five thousand dollars each time they used him for breeding. Generally we kept him in a barn near the ranch house. He had cost one hundred and fifty thousand dollars at an auction, and it wouldn’t be smart to let him roam the hills.
“Exercise?” I asked.
“He’s seemed a bit slow lately,” Dad said. Another grin. “Nothing like fresh air in the mountains to make you feel better. Right?”
“Right.” When I was in the hills away from hockey, I missed hockey. When I was playing hockey and away from the hills, I missed the ranch. I missed seeing Big Boy too. I remember when he was hardly more than a calf, and I was a lot smaller myself. I used to ride him and then feed him.
I think Big Boy remembered those days too, because he never did anything mean to me. Not that I’d try to ride him again. He weighed over a thousand pounds. Think of a small truck. That was Big Boy.
Before I could say anything about Big Boy, Dad pointed ahead of us.
“See it, son? A coyote.”
I did see it. It was down the hill near a stand of trees. About the size of a German shepherd dog, it had a big bushy tail. It stared back at us as we rode closer.
“That’s one smart animal,” Dad said. “It knows I don’t have a rifle. Otherwise it would be long gone.”
“I wonder what it’s eating,” I said. “Looks like it’s standing beside some kind of dead animal.”
Dad frowned. “I hope it isn’t what I think it is.”
We rode closer. The coyote slipped into the bushes. Where it had been standing lay a dead cow. Blood was smeared on the grass around it.
“It is what I thought it was,” Dad said. “This isn’t good. Coyotes aren’t big enough to bring down cattle.”
My horse tried to turn away. It must have smelled the blood.
“Dad,” I said, “over there.”
I pointed at more dead cows, half hidden in the dips of the land.
Dad let out a deep breath. “Six,” he said after a long pause. “Six dead. This isn’t the time of year for bear. I can’t believe wolves are back in the valley. What is going on?”
He lowered himself from his horse and tied the reins to a tree branch. I did the same with my horse. We walked toward the first dead animal.
We didn’t like what we saw. Someone had taken an ax and chopped at it. Blood and bones and guts and cowhide were scattered everywhere.
> “This is sick!” I half shouted. “Who would do this? And why?”
“Six thousand dollars,” Dad said quietly. “Each animal is worth a thousand dollars. Six dead. Six thousand dollars. That’s what someone has cost us.”
Dad was wrong. It cost far more. Over the next hill, we found twelve more dead. That was another twelve thousand dollars.
Then, on the other side of the fence, we found Big Boy. Someone had chopped him up just as bad as the others. A hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of prize bull was now twenty dollars’ worth of dog food.
Weird and terrible as it was to find the dead cattle, I still had to play hockey. Monday afternoon, I was back at the Riverside Coliseum for practice.
I didn’t say much as I put on my hockey equipment in the dressing room. It really bothered me what someone had done to Big Boy and the other cattle.
Who? Why?
It worried me so much that I barely remembered getting dressed. I was leaning forward to tie my skates when Dougie Metcalf came over and sat beside me.
“Watch the telephone,” he whispered.
I didn’t get it. Why was he whispering?
I looked around the dressing room. Guys looked back at me and grinned. That told me something was happening, but I couldn’t guess what.
I watched the telephone. We had a big dressing room. Each of us had a place to hang our equipment between games and practices. At one end was the shower area. At the other a telephone hung on the wall. It was used mainly by Coach Price or the trainer or assistant coaches.
The telephone rang.
Gordie Penn jumped up. He already had his skates on, and he clunked toward the telephone. He answered it before Coach Price could reach it.
Gordie listened. He shook his head to let Coach Price know it wasn’t for him.
Coach went out to the rink to get ready for practice.
“Hey, Luke,” Gordie said, “it’s for you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Luke said from his corner of the dressing room. “If it’s the Montreal Canadiens, tell them I can start tomorrow.”
“Fat chance,” Dougie whispered. “Luke’s hurting our team more than he’s helping. I wonder why Coach Price lets him keep playing.”
Luke walked over to the telephone and took it from Gordie.
“Hello?” Luke said. He frowned. “Hello?”
Dougie kept whispering to me. “Johnny Smith is calling from a pay phone down the hall. He’s speaking soft, so Luke can barely hear him.”
“Why?” I whispered back. Johnny Smith was one of our defensemen. I noticed a lot of guys in the dressing room were trying to hide smiles as they watched Luke on the telephone.
“Hello?” Luke said again. He pressed the phone against his head. He was getting mad. “Hello?”
“Why is Johnny speaking softly on the other end?” Dougie said back to me. “So Luke will press the phone against his ear.”
“Well,” I said, “that explains it.”
Dougie could tell I didn’t mean it, and he grinned at me. “Are you kidding? Before you got here, Gordie put heat rub on the phone.”
“Huh?”
“Heat rub. You know, the stuff that—”
“I know what it is,” I said. It was a thick lotion that you put on sore muscles. It smelled like spearmint and warmed up until it was hot. Sweat and water only made it feel hotter. If you could help it, you never put it on before a game. You used it after, when you needed the heat to help your muscles. “But why would he—”
I stopped myself from asking the rest of my question. I suddenly knew why.
“Hello? Hello? Speak up!” He pressed the phone against his head so hard it looked like he was trying to screw it on. “I can’t hear you!”
Now Luke was really mad. He slammed the phone down and marched back to his corner of the dressing room. He looked at all of us as he sat down. “You’d think a person would be able to raise his voice.”
“You’d think,” Gordie Penn agreed.
The rest of the guys tried to look innocent. They all knew about the heat rub. They knew what Luke didn’t know. At least what Luke didn’t know yet.
This wasn’t a good sign for Luke. A year ago, no one would have dared to play a trick like this on him. Tricks were something you played on rookies to make them part of the team. Tricks were not something you played on the older guys. Not unless you were trying to tell the older guys they weren’t part of the team.
I shot a quick look at Luke. Everyone else was waiting too.
It started with his shoulder. Luke jerked his shoulder up to rub it against his ear. A few seconds later, he frowned and rubbed his ear with his hand.
A few of the guys giggled.
Luke rubbed harder. His face was scrunched up.
“Hey!” Luke rubbed really, really hard. “This is hot!”
It busted up the team. Most of the guys started to howl with laughter.
Luke stood up and danced around, pressing his hand against his ear. The heat rub from the telephone must have been all over the tender skin of his ear. I couldn’t imagine how hot it felt.
Everyone laughed as Luke ran toward the shower area for cold water. We knew it wouldn’t help. Nothing got heat rub off once it was on.
“How’d you like that one?” Dougie asked me. “It was Gordie’s idea.”
“Great,” I said. But I wasn’t laughing much. Big Boy was dead, along with eighteen other cattle. Not even a telephone trick made me feel better.
Telephone!
I’d forgotten to call Stephanie Becker.
I wondered if she would understand.
I called her as soon as practice ended. She understood all too well how all those dead, chopped-up animals would make me forget to call earlier. The same thing had happened on her ranch the month before.
Chapter Five
“Let me get this straight,” I said to Stephanie. “Somebody did the same thing on your ranch? Killed cattle?”
“Just like I told you on the phone this afternoon,” Stephanie said. “About a month ago. And that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Only now it seems too late.”
It was Monday night. We were in the McDonald’s restaurant along the Trans-Canada highway. Traffic outside was busy, with big trucks gearing down and gearing up on their way in and out of Kamloops.
I had been a big spender, buying us four chocolate milkshakes. When she said she only wanted one, I had told her I’d better drink the other three so they didn’t get wasted. That had made her smile.
I drank the first milkshake. I have this habit of staring into the distance when I think. I was thinking about our dead cattle and the dead cattle on her ranch. I stared at the wall behind her and thought about how weird it was.
She caught me staring. She thought I was staring at her, not past her. “I know,” she said, “you’re wondering about my hair. Before we talk about the ranch, maybe there’s something else we should talk about? Like an awards dinner last year?”
I felt my face turn red.
“Good milkshake, isn’t it,” I said, finishing off the first one. “Maybe I’ll have another.”
I grabbed the second one.
“Don’t try to change the subject. Ever since the dinner, I’ve wanted to call you to say I was sorry.”
“You? Call me? Sorry?”
“I think it was worse for you,” she said. “Nobody noticed me with my program over my head. You—” she began to laugh. “You were on stage with a wig stuck in your fly.”
“Very funny,” I said. “The guys still tell me to check my zipper. Why were you wearing a wig, anyway?”
“A bad hair day. A real bad hair day.”
“Pardon me?”
“It’s a girl thing. You see, my dad is a huge Blazers fan. He planned to take me and my mom to the dinner. I thought I would do something special and get my hair permed for it.”
Stephanie touched her hair. “Look how short it is now.”
“Yes?”
; “The day before the dinner I went to a beauty salon. It was the worst thing that could have happened. To perm hair, they put it in curlers and soak it in chemicals.”
“You’re right,” I said. “It’s a girl thing. Guys would never do that.”
“But they’ll stand in front of a television and yell at athletes and refs who can’t hear them.”
“Your perm?” I said. “We don’t need to talk about guys.”
“They had a new girl working at the salon. She mixed the wrong chemicals together. It became like an acid and burned off most of my hair.”
“Seriously?” I began to laugh.
“Not funny,” she said. “I was sitting under the hair dryer, and all of a sudden there was smoke everywhere. My hair was ruined, so I had to wear a wig until it grew long enough for a shorter style. That took a month. Even now, almost a year later, it’s not nearly as long as it used to be.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ve been going nuts wondering why you had a wig on.”
“Why didn’t you call and ask?”
I finished my second milkshake and reached for the third. “Afraid you might shoot me. Plus I didn’t know your name.”
“I’ll forgive you if you forgive me.” She reached across the table to shake my hand.
“It’s a deal,” I said. I liked how warm her hand was. We held on long enough for both of us to know we had held on a little too long. I felt my face growing red again.
“So,” I said, coughing as I let go, “um, you live on a ranch.”
She explained that she lived about thirty miles northwest of Kamloops. Since our ranch was as far southeast of Kamloops, she lived nearly sixty miles away from me. That explained why I had not run into her during the last ten months.
She described how they had found their dead cattle. Fifteen had been killed, including their Limousin bull, Champion. All the cattle, and Champion, had been chopped up. She’d hated all the blood.
“The police think it might be people in a cult,” she said.
“Cult,” I echoed.
“You know, witches. People making sacrifices at night.”
I shivered. It wasn’t just the cold milkshake. “Creepy.”
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