by Lisa Preston
Maybe I should do some advertising, subtle-like. My I-Don’t-Shoe-Big-Lick-Horses rule doesn’t extend to all gaited horses. Anyone who lets their gaited horse have a natural stride instead of going Big Lick with unnatural shoeing and training that makes horses painful and fearful can be my client. We could have us a fine business relationship, the Missus Pritchard and me. And maybe a friendship. There was something there I liked, and I’ve noticed my lack of friends—well, I’m new here—and she rides and does cool leatherwork. So, hey.
Cryptic words and numbers played on the deputy’s hip radio and the scanner behind the register at the same time. The deputy gave it little mind.
Vince Pritchard gabbed to the deputy, manly-style, talk about schedules and reserve time and staffing some parade. These menfolk were more than I could enjoy trying to window shop with, so to speak. Passing a look over Vince Pritchard, I let my gaze check the attitude on Loretta.
She was inspecting the saddle she’d been working on. I’m like that, able to tune out the bystanders when I’m shoeing a horse. Someday, I’d have to talk to Loretta Pritchard about a good used saddle for my Red horse.
On the corkboard at the back of the store, notes and flyers advertised horses and farm equipment for sale, litters of pups and whatnot. Business cards for yard work and such were pinned up. I fished some cards from my wallet and put ’em up.
The deputy stood beside me and said, “You’re the one who found Arielle Blake’s…”
I was glad he didn’t finish that sentence, and said, “Donna Chevigny’s dog found it.”
“Sounds like they found the body,” Loretta Pritchard said, behind us.
“Processing the scene now,” the deputy said. “Trying to get done before dark. Coyotes beat us to it some months back, so the body’s not intact.”
Vince Pritchard gave an in-the-know nod. “Heard the skull’s fractured. Maybe had a fall out there.”
The deputy shook his head. “It was not a natural death.”
Chapter 6
IBOUGHT A COPY OF The Western on my way to meet Guy back at the market. The article said human remains were found on the federal land, but it didn’t name Donna, Slowpoke, or me as the ones responsible for finding the gloved hand.
The Western’s front page offered a nice picture of a gal somewhere north of my age, closer to Loretta’s thirty-ish. Farther down, there was a smaller picture of a gray-bearded guy in a ball cap and flannel shirt captioned: Stan Yates never stopped looking for Arielle Blake. The mean part of my mind wondered about those women who pick guys old enough to be their daddy. Right away, I reminded myself it was not a nice thought and not my business anyways who anyone loves.
“Hey.” Guy greeted me near the boxes of summer squash. He had both hands full of shopping that looked to be vegetables that never graced my childhood. Eggplant, purple potatoes, purple onions, purple carrots. We were going to be eating a lot of grape-colored, but not grape-flavored food.
“You wanted to drop a deposit in the bank,” Guy reminded me.
“I’ll pass. Since we’re way over here on the east side already,” I told him, “let’s stop at that country store off the highway. You like their produce anyways.”
* * *
The bulletin board at the front of the Country Store had some of the same business cards thumb-tacked up that I’d seen at the Saddle-Up. Lawn care, a realtor, a pet-sitter. There was a handwritten flyer offering free kittens. Someone selling chickens. And there was a dog-eared flyer—half-covered by newer ads announcing a rodeo and a pie social—about a missing woman, Arielle Blake. It was the same photo of her that the newspaper carried but zoomed out, showing her from waist up. She was smiling, her strawberry blonde hair loose and sunlit, her right hand resting on her left upper arm. A funky, clunky metal ring on her right thumb caught my eye.
I’d bet that ring was on the hand in that glove that Slowpoke packed from the federal land all the way across the Buckeye ranch.
Ew.
The guy behind the Country Store cash register noticed me looking at the flyer. “Need to take that down. She’s not missing no more.”
I pulled the thumbtack and held the flyer, thinking. Keeper Lake was not far from where we stood, maybe a mile behind the store. Another fifteen miles of rough country beyond that, and I could chance upon the shed at the back of the Buckeye ranch, provided I knew the lay of the land well enough, which I didn’t. How often did Arielle take walks so long? I’ve never walked that far, not even when I was homeless, not even after I’d sold my car for food money. On a horse, I’d cover that distance sure, but these people who walk all day, I do not understand them.
“You know,” a female voice said, low and slow, right behind me, “when I asked you to pay attention for anything suspicious out there, I didn’t mean for you to go find a human hand.”
I turned and tried to remember the name of the young woman whispering this aside. She was about my size and age, but darker eyes, hair looked almost black, wearing a sweaty tank top and running shorts.
The guy behind the register called out, “Good run, Melinda?”
She hesitated a second, her gaze on the flyer in my hand, then on my face. She raised her eyebrows and told him, “Sure was. Five miles.”
Melinda stepped past me for one of the coolers, picking out an unnaturally yellow-green sport drink.
Guy grabbed a carton of duck eggs from the Country Store’s offerings of local goods. Our geese and ducks at home lay eggs in the darnedest places, and we can never get enough at the same time for Guy to work with.
“Can we have a quiet weekend?” Guy asked me as he paid for his eggs at the register.
“Except . . .” I smelled soap. The Country Store stocked local gift stuff on the counter. Whoever thought of scenting soaps with lavender, licorice, or lemon?
“Except what?” Guy asked as we walked out together.
“Tomorrow, I’ve got to get Charley on some cattle, make sure he’s sharp and fresh for when I take him to the Buckeye Monday.”
Melinda came out of the Country Store as I opened Ol’ Blue’s door. That odd aluminum shoe was in my door pocket and she was right beside me, headed for I don’t know where, since there weren’t any other cars in the gravel parking lot.
“Look,” I said, “it’s for sure and for certain none of my business and all, but here’s a thing, I found a shoe out on the Buckeye ranch and I know it doesn’t belong there.”
Melinda looked at me with a plank face. “Let’s see it.”
Like she thinks she’s Perry Daggummed Mason.
“Oh,” she said, as I pulled the shoe out of Ol’ Blue. “A horseshoe.”
Figuring her assessment wasn’t worthy of comment, I gave her none and racked that double aught, slightly squirrelly aluminum shoe that used to be on a front foot of a little horse back in Ol’ Blue’s door pocket.
Melinda headed down the road on foot, southbound. I pulled out north, taking my Guy and his eggs and vegetables back home, thinking about a little horse I didn’t know, though I knew it had a shoer who marks the outside shoe branch. I’d tried not to wonder which shoers around these parts worked that way. It would have been to the credit of anyone who had the sense to wonder with me, but no one did.
* * *
Owen Weatherby’s a guy who’d used me as a pinch shoer a few times but still stuck with his long-timey man, Talbot, for regular shoeings. Weatherby likes roping and reining and he has a dog that pens sheep and cattle like nobody’s business. The Saturday evening gathering wasn’t one of his regular get-you-all-togethers with his buddies but he said a couple folks were coming out and he was willing to let me run Charley on some cattle. I’d been to one of these deals before but not with my date. I picked at my dog’s chest ruff, sprucing him up. Summer and fall are seed season so Charley’s coat was giving me fits. Burrs and seeds from wild grasses were digging themselves into him, making him less than smooth to stroke. He doesn’t go for a lot of fondling, but I couldn’t present him look
ing uncared for.
“Guy and Charley,” I told my host, by way of introduction. The folks, they did make an effort to put a basic set of manners on me in my growing-up years.
Weatherby nodded at my dog and fiancé, in that order, which made me wonder if I should try to cover the Who’s Who again just for clarity, but Guy was already moving to the single grub table out to the side of the parked horse trailers. He added a bowl of pasta salad to the offerings. He’d brought food even though I’d told him this wasn’t a proper hootenanny, just a chance for me to work Charley on cattle. But it did seem the proper time of day to feed my face, so I followed Guy. Charley followed me.
Sonny Weatherby—a more bow-legged, less pot-gutted version of his daddy—swaggered up to me near the grub table. Guess he’d heard from his old man that I was at the Rocking B to run Charley on livestock, though he might not know I was warming my dog up for working for Donna Chevigny.
Turns out, he knew.
“Watch that you keep a fence between you and trouble out on the Buckeye,” Sonny told me, then took his cowboy self a-swaggering away. No doubt he had to get back to helping sheep over fences.
Most talk around the ice chest of beer and soda was about roping. A couple folks mentioned the Outfitters. Four times a year, every equinox and every time the sun has its longest and shortest days, folks with time on their hands get together and set up teepees and shoot black powder guns and wear silly, fringed clothes ’cause they have nothing better to do. Outfitters just like to hold big old weekend campouts and howl at the moon out in the middle of the forest land.
It’s hard to see the point of all that foolishness when what’s interesting about a group of horse folk gathered together is their horses, how their feet are balanced, how they move. I’d been eyeing the hooves of every steed present, seeing whose toes were too long, who was kept steeper behind than was helpful to the horse. It’s enough to keep the mind busy forever.
Guy wrinkled his nose over some ribs he’d sampled. I elbowed him when talk around us went to where one guy was getting his Hollywood Mountain Man style rifle sling. Apparently, a bunch of them frequented the Pritchards’ shop for their kit.
Trying to get Guy noting who’s who and what’s what is a chore, but it’s my chore. If he’s going to be in my world and me in his, we’ll have to ante up a bit. So it’s left to me to get him seeing and putting together anything that’s not food. I bumped my hip into him. He quit inspecting the meat. We both know he can’t eat and listen. I had to get my words in before his mouth went back to sampling.
“They’re talking about the Saddle Up in Gris Loup.” My mind traipsed back to the couple who owned the store, him overbearing, her seeming like someone I’d like to make friends and ride with some day.
“They had marvelous onions in the open market there,” Guy said, fiddling with a barbecued rib on a paper plate.
How I wish he wouldn’t nibble like a girl when there’s witnesses.
“That gal in the Gris Loup tack shop, does the leather work . . .” I started, waiting to see if his mind had truly come off the meat.
“What about her?”
“She was in the Cascade the other day. Then at the Saddle-Up, she said she’d ride with me.”
“Well, fine.” Guy knows I’ve been hankering for riding buddies, and he’s offered to be one.
Mulling on my time in the tack store made me recall driving out there with Guy that evening. “Did you ever hear back from Biff? You called him over something about a map?”
Guy shook his head. I tried the tater salad—lots of eggs in it and someone who used holidays sauce in the recipe—and was about ready to do what I’d come for.
“This was a pointless sacrifice of a steer,” Guy said, setting his rib plate down.
All the time, he’s whining about other cooks not making good use of meat. Poor presentation and seasoning and accompaniments or some such. It’s his main interest, but it occupies his mind way-too much.
Glad I’m not like that.
Soon as I got me a soda, I went to the back pens where Weatherby had his Border collie out for bringing in whichever steer his boss took a notion to wanting.
Word is, Swiftsure came from Scotland proper. Sheep is what he was made to move. But to that little black and white dog, a steer’s just another kind of sheep.
A body standing watching Swift sweep across acreage would wonder how he knew there were more sheep beyond some distant rise. He just knows, though. That’s what herders do. They know. Some sheepdogs like to specialize. Swift does dandy at cattle, but the talk said he moved sheep with his stare. A dog with a lot of eye like that doesn’t need to push with power, that is, doesn’t need to charge and nip.
Over the evening, steers would get moved from holding pens on one side of the arena to the other, each giving up some aerobic entertainment as its pass to rejoining the herd in peace.
A clang, a snort, then dust puffed as a cowboy threw open a gate and loosed a rank steer. It was in the split second that Swift glanced at his person, Owen Weatherby, and in the slice of a minute that Owen was not paying attention, all of which put Swift on hold while this one steer, already way too close to Swift, decided to charge. It was one of those times when everybody can see that a disaster is two seconds from starting and finishing and no one has time to even open their mouths to protest.
That steer was going to catch and kill Swiftsure. We were all going to watch a good dog die.
Chapter 7
“SWIFT!” I HADN’T MEANT TO SCREAM. You should ignore another handler’s working dog, and certainly never command or call to it. My shout was a matter of not wanting to see the inevitable killing crush that steer was going to put on that great dog.
Swift flipped and ran when he saw mortal danger about to grind him into the dirt. We’d expected that. But the steer was coming like the devil on a runaway train from Hades. There was only so much spare distance between them. It wouldn’t work to our favor. No way. We could all see the inevitable, given the best speed of the dog and the steer, already going.
A fit young dog can summon a next level sprint.
Somehow, in that last half-yard between them, Swift fired afterburners that kept his hindquarters clear of the steer’s lowered skull. The dog shot through the arena fence. The metal pipe panels clanged as the steer knocked hard against them.
The hush was our collective swallow.
Guy let out his breath beside me. A couple of good old boys let out appreciative whistles. A few clapped.
“Run that sorry cuss out of there,” Weatherby called to the hands manning the arena gates. Then he said to me, “We’ll find some milder stock for your dog.”
Being the first into the frying pan after the one before was cooked bad, well, that’s a tough break.
“Swift,” Weatherby said, “that’ll do.”
Swift parked himself, looking a little put-out about another dog doing his calling but he honored my Charley, stayed down where Weatherby told him to lie and wait.
The gate man shooed fresh steers into the arena.
Sometimes cattle stay tight. These scattered, one bucking and running deep across the ring, another snorting and turning its heels, the third meandering.
“Away to me,” I said, like I was talking about the weather, but my words meant the world to my old dog.
Charley shot into the arena, arcing wide in a counter-clockwise circle. His age always dropped when I sent him to gather. Later that night though, he might be paying for his eagerness with a stiff body. Still, the stock respected him, the two less rambunctious steers tightening up, wary-like about Charley, no longer feeling free to mill around.
The far steer stopped dead, watching with the rest of us as my dog’s arc swept closer, closer. Then Charley froze just shy of making any of the cattle feel like they had to move a millimeter. It wasn’t just the lone recalcitrant beef with his stare fixed on Charley he was influencing with his eye—the two gathered steers would scatter if my dog push
ed the stray to the point of bolting.
Creep. Charley took one step, the other front paw raised in a threat to take another step. The steer lowered its head, able to defend itself from my fluffy little descendant of wolves.
Charley put his front paw down and lowered his head, eyes hard on the threatening steer, giving up nothing. It was a balancing act. They were playing chicken.
The steer broke eye contact, looking to the gathered steers waiting seventy feet away. He broke his pose and trotted to join them. Charley kept a non-threatening buffer as he followed. If I sent Charley to circle the other direction, the balance would be perfect to push them all trotting for the far end of the arena.
“Come bye,” I said.
My dog ran in as big a clockwise circle as the arena allowed. The steers gave way and started for the far end. Just before they reached the open gate that would pen them out of the arena, the ornery steer didn’t want to cooperate. He broke, wheeling to leave the group. Charley’s automatic response was instantaneous, zipping about to push the jerk back, and in the end, he brought all three steers through the gate, with me moving nothing but mouth muscles.
Guy shook his head and went to study the steers in the holding pen.
“That’ll do, Charley,” I told my good dog, liking my host’s nod to us both. Old Charley’s no sheep whisperer but hey, he can move cattle as well as woolies. And geese? Oh, Guy’d like him to quit herding our geese around.
No fowl here tonight except the fried chicken someone had out on the grub table.
An old duffer near me gnawed the cartilage off the end of a drumstick. I bet he’d been watching me work Charley on Weatherby’s steers. We gave each other friendly nods though I couldn’t quite place him. Somehow, I had the notion that even if the old man hadn’t given me a nod before I worked my dog, we’d be having a howdy now. But first, he talked without words to Charley, stroking his head, then running both hands around my good dog’s ears. I caught his pause when his fingers reached the ear tips but I left it alone. I’m a little sensitive, just for the sake of Charley’s feelings, about the ears. The thing is, is they’re misshapen, too short. It doesn’t hardly show because of his long fringe of hair, but a body can fondle Charley and feel the flaw—no pointy ear tips bent over, just fur grown past.
