“Cattle’s got three stomachs, son. Depends which one catches the bloat. I put a knife to our cow three times. Doggone pincushion. Got nothing. Then I called Mel. I thought I was the one called your Glitter Gulch fellow, but, maybe you’re right, it could have been Mel. Don’t see how it matters.”
“Mel took care of the bloat. Mark worked with the sheep,” Walt stated. He did not ask.
“Hell, it has been a month or more, Sheriff. What do I know?”
“Have you heard of any illness at your neighbors’ ranches? Sheep or cattle?”
“No, sir, I have not.” The man’s answer came out much too quickly and sharply. He’d been expecting that question.
“Would you happen to have a bill handy?” Brandon asked. “Could we maybe get a look at it?”
“I pay ’ em and I throw ’em out, son.”
“It’s ‘Deputy,’ or ‘Deputy Sheriff,’ not ’son,’” Brandon said, making no effort to conceal his contempt. “The vet, Hickenbottom, would have records?”
“Might have. You’d have to ask him.”
“We will.” Brandon withdrew his notebook and scribbled in it.
“I don’t see what all the fuss is about,” Lon Bernie said.
“A man’s dead,” Walt reminded. “That’s fuss enough for us.”
The wind picked up. At a certain temperature, it seemed it couldn’t get any colder, but it always did. Lon Bernie still didn’t seem to feel it.
“Ever had any sign of mad cow over this way?” Walt asked, hoping for a reaction.
“That’s never come down from Canada, as far as I know.”
“And the last time you called upon either vet would have been…?”
Lon Bernie cocked his head toward Walt, as if he had only one good eye. “A while,” he said.
“Can you be more specific?”
“Out here, time kinda runs into itself. Drive a man half mad, this time of year. Maybe more than half.”
“Cattle bloat from eating too much green grass,” Walt said.
“A month ago, we had green grass. Early winter this year. Moldy hay’ll do it too. You trying to make a point, Sheriff? ’Cause you’re going the long way around the barn to find the door.” He looked first at Walt, then at Brandon.
“I’ll tell you what I need: I need the truth, Mr. Bernie. And I don’t believe I’m getting it.”
“You calling me a liar, Sheriff? ’Cause, over here, that’s not terribly neighborly. Listen, I’ve got chores to do.” He never flinched, as he maintained eye contact with Walt.
He turned and walked toward the barns.
The foul smell had not been apparent while Walt and Brandon had been out of the vehicle, but as they drove away from the ranch it filled the car again. Complaining, Brandon rolled down the window.
That seemed to only make matters worse.
Like burning hair.
25
ROY COATS TRUDGED AROUND BEHIND THE CABIN ALONG a path shoveled through four feet of snow that created a trench with six-foot-high walls. He avoided the piles of frozen dog excrement, as if they were land mines.
The narrator in his head wouldn’t shut up.
The rebel soldier must learn to improvise if he is to survive. The needs of the few give way to the needs of the man. Faced with the possible death of his hostage, he’s willing to make a sacrifice.
Coats called the two cows and the pig by their names: Bess, Tilda, and Pinky. He didn’t think enough of the chickens to name them. He had, on many occasions, launched into rambling diatribes with only these three as his audience. He’d gone on about the injustices to society brought on by the immigration influenza, the disease of poverty eating into society like a cancer. He had stood on the milking stool and lectured for ninety minutes at a time, his voice carrying over their heads and fading into the thousands of acres of empty wilderness that surrounded his homestead. The government had lost its way, focused entirely overseas, when there was cleaning up to do at home. He’d chosen the name Samakinn carefully, never mind that his recruitment had not gone well. A spear was needed. The Romans, the Croats, the Uzbeks, the Hutus all had the right idea: ethnic cleansing. But it started with being heard, being taken seriously. The government thought they could silence their voices by denying their acts. But once the people heard of what they’d done, how powerful they were, the Samakinn’s message would be heard. Supporters would swell their ranks. Change would be at hand. He sought legitimacy, nothing less: credit where credit was due. The doc would make his report-who didn’t believe a doctor?
He had a long night ahead of him, dressing out whichever beast he decided to kill. It was a great deal to ask of him. The sacrifice had begun.
As prearranged, the daily radio call didn’t happen until midnight; that meant it would be a while before Gearbox could arrive with the insulin. He had no choice but to act, compounding his resentment.
The cows gathered on the other side of the fence, expecting a feeding. Pinky was smart enough to wait inside the pen. He hadn’t realized how difficult this would be. Like killing a house pet. He was willing to see Aker or others die for his cause but not one of his stock.
He considered Pinky first. He had no great rapport with the sow and considered her a dirty, though lovable, companion. But the size of the pancreas mattered, and that quickly took her out of consideration. It was either Bess or Tilda, and Bess’s condition demanded it be her.
He used a can of grain to lure her through the side door of the ramshackle shed at the corner of the paddock, the chickens making noise in the coop as if a fox were on the prowl. He wanted her as close to the block and tackle as possible, knowing he’d have to rig some kind of motor or winch to hoist all eight hundred pounds of her.
He got a harness on her head while she was still standing. Attached a length of chain to the front ring and secured it to a two-ton pickup truck that hadn’t run in years. She was chewing on the grain, the first she’d had in a long, long time, and he knew that for a cow this was as close to heaven as it got.
So he scratched her on the head between the eyes, feeling the hard bone beneath the tough skin. Dust rose from the black-and-white hair. It had formed a permanent layer on both animals.
“You’ve been a good girl all these years, Bess,” he said, his throat tightening. “Your being pregnant is your downfall. What can I say? No greater honor than to fall a martyr for a cause. I ought to know that. I expect I’ll be seeing you soon.”
He stabbed the knife in sharply at the jugular. Dragged and twisted its blade until she sprayed, her eyes pure white, as she reeled and cried out. Leaned his weight into it, pulling for her windpipe, wanting this over with.
Resentment filled that part of his heart emptied by grief. He would see the vet dead for this, after he’d written the report.
26
WALT STOPPED THE CHEROKEE BESIDE THE CLOSED FENCE gate. He could see the end of a double-wide trailer, some outbuildings, and curved mounds in the snow about a hundred yards past the gate.
“Looks like snowmobiles been running in and out,” Brandon said. The track started on the other side of the closed gate and had been beaten down by a good many trips.
“Roads are all snow floor,” Walt observed. “A snowmobile’s as good as a car.”
Walt leaned on the horn, and they waited for some sign of life from the ranch. When none was forthcoming, they left the Cherokee parked where it was and went in on foot. As they neared the cabin, they saw that the snowmobile track connected with others, forming a network of beaten-down paths leading to and from various outbuildings.
Walt shouted, “Sheriff’s Office!” It wouldn’t have surprised either man to be greeted by the wrong end of a shotgun, and Brandon walked with his good hand resting on the stock of his pistol. The cold dry snow squeaked beneath their boots.
When their knocks on the door went unanswered, they checked the neighboring outbuildings. One was a working garage, the other a storage shed overrun with junk.
A snowmobile
track continued past a granary, leading toward the fence line.
“I know you think she’s using me to get at you, but that’s not the way it is,” Brandon said, as they trudged through the snow.
Walt stopped and turned to make sure Brandon heard him. “You’re my best deputy. You think that’s coincidence?” He turned and walked on.
“You two were separated.”
“She convinced herself she was a lousy mother. She envied how easily the parenting came to me. It isn’t about you. It’s about the kids. She’s having second thoughts now. She’s going to fight for them. Are you ready for that?”
Brandon stopped short, and the distance between them grew. He had to hurry to catch back up.
“I want to work for you. This is where I belong.”
“Grow up.”
The rancher was a pack rat. The mushrooms of snow seen from a distance turned out to be junk: dishwashers, farm implements, tires, car parts, tractor parts, furniture. It surrounded every building, looming mysteriously out of the snow.
“Damn,” Brandon said.
“You notice what’s missing?” Walt asked.
“Human beings?”
“Listen.”
The two men stopped. Absolute silence.
“It’s quiet enough,” Brandon admitted.
“And then some.” Walt led Brandon along one of the snowmobile paths to a fence line. The snow out in the pasture was rippled and dented by interconnecting seams, not flat and pristine. It reminded Walt of a brain. But there was no recent activity. All of the wandering seams connected into a single point down the fence line near yet another outbuilding.
“Those lines mark where the snow was trod down by livestock,” Walt said, pointing toward the shed. “Then a fresh snow covered them up.”
“So where’s the livestock?”
“That’s the point, Deputy. Moved ’em off the place.” Walt pointed to where all the paths connected. His eyes couldn’t make out a gate there, but he expected to find one. “I’d say it was probably to another field, but we’re not hearing them.”
“Who moves their livestock in winter?”
“It’s a pain,” Walt agreed. “Unless a water line froze or the snow got too dry. They might move them to make feeding easier.”
Walt started down the fence line through the knee-deep snow.
“What the hell?” Brandon called out, hesitating to join him.
“Check the trailer again. Another reason the livestock would be moved is if someone died.”
Brandon mulled that over. Walt kept on walking, trudging with difficulty through the snow.
“Are you mad at me, Sheriff? For what I said?” Brandon called out.
“Shut up and check the trailer.”
“Yes, sir.”
The farther down the fence line he went, the tougher it got for Walt, his legs growing weary from the deep snow. Sweat ran down his rib cage, despite the harsh cold that whipped his face, but there was something else he felt: an unease brought on by the utter stillness of the place, and the growing sensation he and Brandon were being watched.
As he drew closer to the shed, he picked out the outline of a feed trough, a double-hung gate, and a pair of automatic waterers. He arrived to the feed trough and saw it was filled with snow, suggesting the animals had been moved sometime between the two most recent snowstorms-in the last five to six days. He studied the sweep of the gate, the way it had pushed the prior snowfall ahead of it as it had been opened. This too confirmed his time line. Mark Aker had made a two-day trip to his cabin a few days earlier, just before the search and rescue that took his brother’s life. Had this ranch been a stop for him during those two days? What had he found? Why had the livestock been moved?
Fighting the deep snow, he wrestled open the shed’s large door far enough to squeeze through. It was dark inside, shafts of sunlight appearing as Walt kicked up dust from the dirt floor. A milking station and some stalls. A squeeze chute, used to isolate an animal for doctoring or branding.
He slipped back through the door to the outside. He might have missed it had he not visited the shed, for only now did he get a good look at the automatic waterers.
The waterers were clear of snow but dry. Warmed by a thermostat in winter months, with a float valve to control the water level, the devices were used to save the rancher from fighting ice and trying to keep his cows drinking. Walt studied the jerry rigging: on each device, baling wire had been twisted to hold the float valve up so the bowl wouldn’t refill.
He pulled off his glove and tested the metal bowl; it was warm to the touch. That explained the snow having not collected on it but not the floats being wired up.
Some kind of problem with the waterers would explain the livestock having been moved. A frozen line, or intermittent power.
Chicken or the egg: had the livestock been moved and then the water turned off or had the water been turned off and then the livestock moved?
The unexpected visit at his office from the CDC woman-what was her name?-replayed vividly. Danny Cutter’s employees, sick as dogs. Flown out in a private jet-literally, under the radar. Danny’s most recent enterprise was Trilogy Springs: spring water from a source “two miles deep.”
Maybe it wasn’t mad cow after all. Something to do with the water?
To his left, Walt noticed an area that had been blocked from view by the shed.
Walt plodded along, ten yards, twenty, thirty. A hundred. He climbed a fence, where a snow-covered trail led through a gate. He was soaked through with sweat now, his breathing heavy. But there was more to it: his nerves all ajangle.
Maybe it resulted from the frank talk with Brandon. Maybe those wounds weren’t meant to be reopened.
His thought was interrupted by the sound of animals-a sound so unique and, prior to that moment, missing.
As he crested the hill and looked down, he saw five hundred sheep-a half a band-spread out along the edge of a fog-shrouded creek. The fence crossed the creek in two places and rose to include another twenty acres on the far side. The sheep had been fed hay from the far side of the enclosed pasture. Some of the hay remained scattered. Mist rose from five holes in the creek ice, each hole roughly chopped open with an ax. The rancher had traded more difficult feeding conditions for easier access to water, explaining the empty pasture behind him.
But it drew his attention back to the condition of the water. The sheep were now being offered surface water in conditions that likely required grunt labor to keep the iced-over water holes open and accessible. If a line had frozen in the waterers behind him, then it made some sense to move the sheep.
He retraced his own tracks through the deep snow to the waterers. Slipped off his gloves. Began untwisting the wire used to keep the floats up.
If the waterers were broken, then moving the sheep made practical sense.
But if the waterers worked, then why had the rancher chosen labor-intensive surface water over automatic waterers? That might require an explanation.
The last twist freed the wire.
Walt released it and watched.
27
ROY COATS’S APRON AND BOOTS WERE COVERED IN BLOOD, as he returned to the cabin, sweat running down his face. Aker was asleep, his head slumped forward, the rest of him still tied to the ladder-back chair. His breathing sounded sharp and fast and shallow. As Coats shut the door, Aker lifted his head. His skin was sallow, his eyes bloodshot.
Coats hoisted the freezer-sized Ziploc bag. Inside it, Bess’s unborn calf’s pancreas slid around like a dead fish. “Now what?” he said.
Aker’s eyes rolled in his head.
Coats crossed the room, stiff-legged and fast, and took Mark Aker by the chin. “Do not pass out on me! I’ve done my part. Now, you tell me what’s next. You hear me?” He raised his voice. “Doc! You hear me!?”
Aker vomited into his own lap.
Coats stepped back, grumbling. “Jesus!”
“Not doing real well,” Aker managed to croak o
ut.
“Shit!”
“Fluids,” he mumbled.
Coats cut him loose and poured him a glass of water. Aker gagged it down. But he shook his head, as he handed the empty glass back to Coats. “From here, I dehydrate. The vomiting won’t allow me to keep the water down. I’m going to lapse into a coma at some point. Be ready for that. You’ll have to do this on your own, Coats. Have some sugar water or juice ready, because you probably won’t get the dosage right.” His eyes bobbed. “You got all that?”
“You gotta stay with me, Doc.”
“I’m trying.”
“Grind it?” Coats asked, indicating the baggie on the table.
“Mortar and pestle. Coffee mug’ll work. Handle end of a screwdriver, but you’ll need to boil it first. Ten minutes. Do you have any saline?”
“Contact lens solution.”
“That’ll work. You may need that. Not much. Enough to liquefy. Then get the extract into the syringe.”
“I mush it up. Add the saline. How much do I give you?”
Coats was already over at the stove. He dropped a screwdriver in the kettle of boiling water kept there to throw moisture into the air. He located an oversized coffee mug, rinsed it with some of the boiling water, and put the contents of the baggie in the cup. It looked like a piece of liver but was, in fact, pancreas.
Aker muttered. Coats returned to him and put his ear by Aker’s trembling lips. “If I start sweating and shaking… this is after the injection… then you gave me too much. I need the-” Aker vomited, pitched forward, and passed out. Coats shook him, but it was no use: he was unconscious.
“You need what?” Coats screamed at him.
Coats didn’t have ten minutes to sterilize the screwdriver. He used a pair of barbecue tongs to fish the screwdriver from the boiling water; he dried it on a clean dish towel and used the butt end to smash the tissue in the mug. In a matter of minutes, he had the tissue reduced to a mushy gruel. He added a small amount of the contact lens solution, and then he tipped the mug and drew the extract into the same syringe originally intended to get Aker to cooperate.
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