On the Trail of Trouble
Page 3
rest of the herd so that Kincaid could raise the little
one and groom it for the 4-H circuit. Had a pen and
shelter for them out by Cloud Mesa. Now they're gone,
the shelter's destroyed, and my daughter's heart is
broken. What are you going to do about it?”
“Calm down, Bill,” the sheriff said. “It's not going to
do any good to yell at me. I'm not going to find the
culprits any faster that way.”
“These are friends of Kincaid,” Melissa Turner said.
She gently put a hand on her husband's arm while she
introduced Nancy, Bess, and George. “Girls, this is
Sheriff Matt Switzer. He's an old friend of ours and a
real good lawman. Tell him what you found.”
Nancy told the sheriff about the site and then
showed him the clay tire track models dried on the
pieces of board.
“Well, now,” Sheriff Switzer said. “Looks like we
have some amateur detectives helping us.”
“Nancy is not exactly an amateur,” Bess said,
proudly. “She has solved many crimes and has been a
big help to law enforcement officials all over the
country.”
“And beyond,” George added. “Show him what else
we found, Nancy.”
Nancy unwrapped the hubcap and offered it to the
sheriff.
“So, what do we have here?” he asked, leaning in to
check it out more closely. “A hubcap, hmmmm?”
Nancy told him where she had found it and showed
him her pencil rubbing of it.
“Doesn't really look like much of anything, does it?”
he said, squinting at the smeary picture. “It's pretty
rusty. It could have been up there for ages and could
be anybody's.”
The sheriff dropped the hubcap back in the bag.
“But I'll take it along with me, just in case. These tire
tracks, now,” he said, peering closely at the models
Nancy and George had made. “These are something
else. They're real clear. Could be a big help. Thanks,
you two. This is good work.” He smiled at Nancy and
George.
“Look, Matt,” Mr. Turner said. “Do you have any
clues? This makes over ten percent of our herd rustled
now, and we don't seem to be any closer to getting it
stopped. Have you checked out Badger Brady again?”
“I told you before, we've decided it's being done by
outsiders,” the sheriff replied. “There's a gang been
coming down from Canada and rustling cattle and
horses from upper Minnesota and North Dakota.
Seems reasonable they could be coming farther south
and picking off your herd, too.”
“Well, let's get whoever's doing this,” Mr. Turner
said. “I want someone to pay for this.” His dark brown
eyes flashed with anger.
“We're working on it, we're working on it,” the
sheriff said. “But it's not that simple. They're pretty
slippery. Bout the time we get close, they've hopped
back across the border.”
Nancy could see Mr. Turner's lips tighten in fury
and frustration.
“I know it's hard to be patient, Bill,” the sheriff said.
“But we're going to get them. We've got the law in
three states working on this—and even the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police are helping us out.” Nancy
felt a chill as a cool breeze kicked up the dust in the
drive.
He turned to Kincaid. “Don't worry, little lady,” he
said. “With the Canadian Mounties helping us, we're
bound to get your calf back.” He smiled at Nancy and
the others and nodded at the cloth-wrapped hubcap in
his hand. “And with you three working on the case, too,
we can't fail.” He got into his pickup and backed
around, then waved as he took off down the drive.
“He's so calm about this, he makes me crazy,” Mr.
Turner said, his hands clenched into tight fists.
“I know, honey,” Mrs. Turner said. “But you and
Matt have been friends since grade school. You know
how he is. He's slow and methodical. Likes to get
everything in place before he acts. Not like you,” she
added with a small smile.
“Dad's a man of action,” Kincaid told her friends.
Nancy recognized the pride in the young woman's
voice.
“Oh, goodness—my pies!” Mrs. Turner suddenly
yelled. She ran toward the house, followed closely by
Kincaid and Bess.
“I'm going to do some chores,” Mr. Turner said, his
long legs striding toward the barn. “When's dinner?”
“Half an hour,” Mrs. Turner called as she disap-
peared into the kitchen.
“You two want to help?” Mr. Turner called back to
Nancy and George.
“Love to,” George said, following him.
“I'll be right there,” Nancy said. “I want to get a
drink of water.” She walked into the ranch house just
as the phone rang. She could hear laughter from the
kitchen as Mrs. Turner, Kincaid, and Bess appeared to
be rescuing the pies.
The phone rang again, and Kincaid yelled from the
kitchen with a shriek of laughter. “Someone get that.
Our hands are full.”
Nancy walked to the old-fashioned phone table in
the hallway and picked up the receiver.
“Hello,” she said. “This is the M-Bar-B—”
“I know who it is,” hissed the low voice through the
receiver. “I was hoping you'd answer.”
Nancy's heart pounded, and the hairs on the back of
her neck stood at attention. The voice sounded as if it
were from another world—eerie and hushed.
“Don't try to find your little calf or you'll be very
sorry,” the caller continued. “I'm only going to warn
you once.”
4. The Jawbone Talks
Nancy shuddered as a chill rippled across her
shoulders. This time it was not caused by the South
Dakota breeze. The threatening words of the anon-
ymous phone call still echoed in her mind—even after
the caller had hung up and she walked into the kitchen.
“Nancy?” Bess's cheery voice interrupted Nancy's
thoughts. “What's the matter?”
Nancy told Bess, Kincaid, and Mrs. Turner about
the phone call. “He must have thought I was you,
Kincaid. It was hard to tell because the voice was so
low and whispery, but the person may have an accent.”
“What kind of accent?” Kincaid asked.
“I'm not sure,” Nancy said, going over the words in
her head. “A sort of jumbled German, maybe. Or he
might have been trying to disguise his voice and made
it sound strange.”
“Oh my,” Melissa Turner said. “What a horrible
thing to do—call and scare us like that. This has to
stop. I am not going to allow my family to be bullied
any longer! We've got to get to the bottom of this.”
“You're right, Mom,” Kincaid said, slamming a
spoon back into a pot of chili on the countertop. Drops
of reddish brown sauce sizzled on the pale green tile.
Kincaid yanked off the apron she had loosely tied
around her waist and threw it onto a chair. “Mom, you
call Matt and tell him about the call,” she said. “Bess,
you and I will go to the barn to tell Dad. Then we're
going to eat. An army needs food to fight a war.” She
stormed out of the kitchen, and Bess ran out the door
after her.
Over dinner Nancy, Bess, George, and the Turners
talked about the rustling.
“Matt said he'd put a tracer on our phone in case we
get another call,” Mr. Turner said.
As Nancy buttered a large chunk of Melissa Turner's
homemade corn bread, she felt another shudder at the
memory of that low, eerie voice.
“What proof do you have that Badger Brady might
be the rustler, Mr. Turner?” Nancy asked.
“He's the logical suspect,” Mr. Turner replied, his
lips tightly drawn in a narrow smile.
Nancy could tell he really didn't want to talk about
Badger Brady with his visitors, so she decided to drop
the subject.
No one spoke for a few minutes, each lost in
thought. Finally George broke the silence. “What
about that hubcap?” she asked. “Don't you think that
could be a clue?”
“Matt says it's so old and rusty, it could have been
up there for ages,” Mrs. Turner said. “Or, it could have
been lost by somebody driving around there, not
necessarily the rustlers.”
“But I don't understand,” George said. “How could
someone just drive out there to the shelter? Your ranch
is fenced, right?”
“Sure, but it's a thousand acres,” Mr. Turner said.
“We can't monitor the entire perimeter all the time.
We make regular fence and barbed-wire checks, but
there's not someone watching every yard of fence every
day.”
“And a lot of stuff can disturb a ranch fence,”
Melissa Turner added. “A charging animal, a high
prairie wind—”
“A pair of wire cutters,” Kincaid grumbled.
“Once a fence is breached, an intruder has pretty
much free rein,” Mr. Turner said. “There are no roads,
so you need a pretty good vehicle.”
“But everybody out here has one of those,” Mrs.
Turner pointed out.
“But just anybody still shouldn't be driving around
there, Mom,” Kincaid said. “That's our property.”
“Yes, but people do wander off the road sometimes
and get lost,” Mrs. Turner said. “When there are no
road markers or houses or anything—nothing but miles
and miles of open land—it's hard to find your way back
to civilization.”
After dinner Nancy, Bess, and George helped
Kincaid clean up; then all four went to the guest cabin
to talk.
George put the petrified wood fragments and the
prehistoric tiger tooth on the windowsill. “These are so
cool,” she said. She held up the tooth, turning it so it
shimmered in the moonlight. “Did you say you find a
lot of this stud around here?”
“Mmm-hmm,” Kincaid answered. “This whole area
attracts archaeologists and paleontologists from all over
the world.”
“Tell them about your national science project,”
Bess urged. “Go on—don't be modest.”
“Well,” Kincaid said, “I worked at the geology
museum as a summer intern. I'd found a baby
mammoth jawbone on the west end of the ranch.”
“You're kidding!” George said.
“Nope. I studied it to determine what it ate. You can
tell a lot about the diet of a fossilized jawbone by the
shape the teeth are in.”
“Got her to the national finals,” Bess said proudly.
“Very cool,” George said, studying the tooth.
Kincaid turned on the small television set. “It's
almost time for the local news,” she said. “I want to see
if they mention the rustling.”
They watched for half an hour, but there was
nothing said about Lulu and Justice.
“I should have known,” Kincaid said as the weather
forecaster began predicting a beautiful day for
tomorrow. “What's the big deal about a couple of
missing bison, right?”
“Maybe it's intentional,” Bess said. “Maybe it is
those guys from Canada who did it. Maybe the two
countries are setting up a sting to catch them. If that's
the case, the less said on the news about any of it, the
better.”
“There's one part that bothers me, though,” Nancy
said.
“What?” George asked, putting the tooth back on
the windowsill and rejoining the group around the
fireplace.
“If we're dealing with an international ring of
rustlers, why did they take Lulu and Justice?” Nancy
pointed out. “How did they even know they were out
there? Why not just keep on taking a few at a time
from the main herd? And why make that threatening
call? If these guys are two-country rustling
professionals, I don't think they'd be phoning the
victims personally.”
“Come to think of it,” Bess said, “you're right. The
caller said your little calf.' How did the person know
Lulu and Justice were Kincaid's?”
“Hey,” George said. “Are you saying you don't think
this Canadian gang stole those two?”
“I don't know what I'm saying exactly,” Nancy said.
“It just doesn't seem to add up. The caller seemed to
know who Kincaid was—or at least knew about her,
and that Lulu and Justice were hers.”
“Someone who knows me . . .” Kincaid murmured.
“Or at least knows about you,” Nancy repeated.
“You mean someone local,” Bess said. “You mean
Badger Brady.”
“Maybe,” Nancy said. “Kincaid, tell me more about
him. What's his real name?”
“He grew up around here,” Kincaid began. “Went to
school with my dad and Matt as I told you. Dad always
said he was called Badger because badgers have such
nasty temperaments and they're such vicious animals
when cornered.”
“If he's so dangerous,” Nancy asked, “why did your
dad go into business with him?”
“Badger wasn't always so bad,” Kincaid continued.
“His dad and uncle went to prison for cheating on their
taxes and not paying their bills, and the whole family's
been in trouble off and on forever. Badger got into
some scrapes when he was younger, but he seemed to
straighten up. Dad figured starting a ranch together
might give Badger the chance he needed to turn out
better than the rest of his family.”
“After he and your dad broke up their business,”
George said, “how did he start his own buffalo ranch?”
“He left the area for a few years,” Kincaid answered.
She stretched her legs, then draped them over the
wooden arm of the worn leather chair. “Then back
he
came, flashing a lot of money and buying up bison
stock from Colorado. The next thing we knew, he had a
herd big enough to give Dad some real competition.
And then he was back to his old ways.”
“What do you mean?” Nancy asked.
“Well, we heard rumors that some of his stock was
sick but he sells them as if they're healthy,” Kincaid
said.
“That's pretty unethical,” Bess said.
“He falsifies records, swindles customers, and cheats
on his federal inspections,” George said. “And now he's
maybe a rustler to boot.”
“Do you think the sheriff suspects him at all? I know
he thinks a Canadian gang did it,” Nancy said to
Kincaid.
“Matt knows Badger from school,” Kincaid an-
swered. “He agrees he could be a suspect, and has even
checked out Badger's ranch. But there's no sign of any
of our missing herd there—or anywhere. And you
heard Matt. He seems to be leaning toward the gang
from Canada.”
“Do you brand the bison?” Nancy asked.
“Sort of,” Kincaid answered. “We tattoo the inside of
one ear.”
“The phone call might be a beginning,” Nancy said.
“I'd like to hear Badger Brady's voice— especially over
the phone. Maybe we can work up a sting of our own.”
In the background, the sports reporter finished up his
story, and the station broke for a commercial.
Kincaid reached over to turn up the set. “They
always end the news show with a short feature about
something local,” she said. “It's their last chance to
mention Lulu and Justice.”
As they watched, the program returned to the news
desk. “And now for our final story,” the anchorwoman
said. “Local personality Antoinette Francoeur has
made the headlines again. You might recall that last
year, she released all the parakeets and cockatiels from
a pet shop.”
“Why would she do that?” Bess asked.
“She said she doesn't believe in confining animals
for any reason,” Kincaid said.
“Francoeur has scheduled a press conference for
tomorrow morning at ten at Beauforêt, her estate in
the Black Hills,” the anchorwoman continued. “She is
expected to announce the formation of a new
organization dedicated to liberating all animals.”
“What happened to her last year after the pet shop
incident?” Nancy asked.
“She paid a fine, but that's all,” Kincaid answered.