Dead Blow

by Lisa Preston

  “That’s a real nice dog.”

  Some cowpoke behind me hollered, “Hollis!”

  The old duffer beside me excused himself with a nod and a “Ma’am,” before going to see what the yeller wanted.

  I hunted up Owen Weatherby’s son to talk on the subject the young man had had aspirations of that stupidest of sport, bull riding. I figured he could maybe fill me in on Chevigny bull stories.

  He could. It was a Light the Pipe talk and I was fixing to hear plenty.

  “Horse hunter. A killer,” Sonny began, shaking loose tobacco from a pouch and tamping it in his pipe’s bowl. Doesn’t he know a guy has to look 170 years old, like that Hollis feller, before pipe smoking looks cool?

  “What was that killer’s name?” I asked.

  “Dragon?” Puffing helped him think. “Dragoon!”

  Sonny gave me the whole story, but in a nonchalant way that pretended he hadn’t daggummed near died in his effort to sit on a boiling Brahma for eight seconds. Cameron Chevigny had partnered up to try being a rodeo stock contractor and started with his bad-apple bull, Dragoon. Dragoon was a rough ride for those few who’d had a chance to try his back and the bull never suffered anyone riding him the full eight seconds. But not many had a crack at him. Dragoon was the unridden bull of the West, had one great season beating some better-than-good bull riders, but his deal was that often he’d seriously attack the pickup rider after he dumped his cowboy. Because the bull proved truly to want a career as a killer, Cameron Chevigny didn’t get a contract to bring him to Vegas for the National Finals Rodeo, so money couldn’t be made that way. Maybe Chevigny was hoping to do well breeding that big son of a gun, but then he died under his tractor.

  Sonny was yanked out by the fighters and rail sitters who only had free access because the bull decided to charge a rider. Sonny about gave up bull riding, there in Salinas. And when Dragoon tried the same Gore-A-Pony move at a sanctioned rodeo a month later, Cameron Chevigny was told not to bring the bull around anymore. A shaky start and end for Chevigny’s side business of providing rodeo stock, rolling in with an extra dangerous animal. Had me shaking my head as Sonny’d told how after the bull pitched him high and mighty, it had just turned and charged the rider. Not that bull riding can be safe by any stretch. It takes some seriously silly boys to try that. Unlike bronc riding, where the pickup rider pulls up alongside the rodeo stock to get the contestant off, in bull riding, it’s the fighters, often dressed as clowns, that run up to the bull to help the rider. The fighters—two or three cowboys on the ground—straighten out the bull, protect the bull rider, get him clear. Yeah, sure, there’s safety riders in the arena but they about never rope these bulls, because there isn’t a horse strong enough to hold a raging Brahma. That day, in Salinas where Sonny Weatherby was bull riding, Dragoon just plain bypassed the fighter and charged the safety rider at the far end of the arena. The safety rider’s horse went down, the rider barely escaped, and the poor horse had to screech out of the arena as the bull charged him again. Then the whackjob bull bent the rails trying to go after the horse.

  “That’s why I told you to watch out for that bull,” Sonny said. “If you’re astride out there, he’ll want your horse.”

  “I get it.” Makes sense. I’d have figured that another rodeo stockman would have bought the bull and made another try of him or kept him for breeding. Either that or he got rendered to fatten up a whole lot of dogs. He was huge scary, that bull, from what Weatherby’s son had to say. And yeah, that was the bull Donna had mentioned.

  Thinking back, I’d heard of Dragoon before I ever came to Oregon—when I was apprenticing as a shoer in California—but I’d never realized I was living where the little bit famous un-rideable rodeo Brahma was pastured.

  Putting his head through a cowboy’s chest is understandable enough but we can’t have a bull trying to kill horses. A tough bull is a crowd-pleaser, but a horse-hurter is a whole ’nother deal.

  And Donna Chevigny had this blasted killer Dragoon out on of her pastures?

  “Why didn’t they sell the bull?” I asked.

  Shrugging, he suggested, “Maybe it’s not hers to sell. Chevigny was partners with Hollis Nunn in the rodeo stock business.”

  “And that never quite got off the ground, huh?”

  Sonny shook his head.

  Some things in Cowdry weren’t making sense. These things were new to me, but old news for others. I waited a piece before asking my host’s son, “Ever hear tell of the Chevignys’ daughter?”

  Sonny Weatherby looked hard at me, nodded and shook his head all at once. “Three-wheeler accident. About broke them. It was a damn tragedy. Everybody loved her. Including me.”

  My mind went grabbing for straws.

  Now it was a question of what and how much to tell Guy. He sometimes gets himself a little exercised thinking I’m going to get myself broken in this job of mine and he’s a wee bit of a coddler, truth be told. How much did Guy need to know about Cameron Chevigny’s bull?

  It was more than enough to think on. I recalled the hot wire fence that had kept the peace between the Buckeye’s two back pastures, confining Donna’s horses on one side, the bull on the other, then remembered the saggy barbed wire that defined the federal lease land behind the Buckeye ranch where her cattle ranged. I hadn’t been wary enough and counted myself lucky I hadn’t been killed.

  Didn’t make me none too excited to go back for a second helping.

  Chapter 8

  THIS DAY, DONNA OFFERED ME A good stout buckskin.

  “The sheriff asked me to not let Slowpoke wander onto the federal land again where he could mess with their crime scene processing. Your dog won’t just run around and pester and roll in things?”

  “Charley will mind me.”

  She shut Slowpoke up in her house then mounted a too-tall Appendix Quarter Horse.

  With half her range horses shod our first day, I’d still have to do an even six, plus get cattle moved. We rode out back, through the ravine, and scored nicely cooperative horses again. We could both see what was left to be done up at the open machine shed, but still the shoeing happened by the pole corral, same place as the first long day.

  I worked in peaceable quiet that morning, but my mind kept moving to the other chore that wanted to be fit in before dinner. Charley squished himself against sagebrush tight enough to win some shade. Over midday sandwiches, we pieced together a plan for Charley to bring the range cattle off the lease land without the bull chancing up to kill us. Dragoon, somewhere out in the Buckeye’s east pasture, would likely get interested when we brought the herd in off the federal land and into the west pasture. And the way the gates worked, he’d be less secure when we had the back gate off the machine shed open to let the herd run through from the federal land to join the horses.

  “Why don’t you get rid of that bull?” I said, even though it was purely none of my blasted business. “Sell him or shoot him, I mean.”

  Donna had less to say on that than she’d had all day, which is, nothing. She held the horse I was shoeing, fetched the next one, passed me a water bottle regularly and that was all afternoon.

  Six full shoeings on, I felt like I’d done a full day’s work. I was whipped by the time I released that last hoof, and awful glad to be putting my tools away for the day. We’d be ahorseback while Charley moved the cattle.

  Donna sent me to ride right up the hogback to the shed, saying she’d just be a minute. I looked back from the hilltop, just shy of the shed.

  She stood her horse by the tractor with her head bowed. I heard her murmur, couldn’t make out the words, but was glad, because this was private stuff. I looked away.

  Our plan was that Donna would mind the big gate, be the last one through. I wanted my horse fresh, so rode to the water trough.

  The Buckeye’s solar electric fence, taut across a long row of metal T-posts, divvied the west and east land, marrying up the sections at the shed’s front gutter downspout. The hot wire straddled th
e long oval stock tank. I was waiting for my mount to wet his whistle at the water tank when I saw the serpent yawing away into the east side.

  Sometimes I think I didn’t come far enough north when I left the Southwest. I hear tell there’s no snakes in Alaska, and parts of Washington don’t even have poisonous ones. Here in central Oregon, we’ve got snakes.

  Snakes and me have never seen eye to eye. If this one had been going into the shed’s shade, instead of heading out for a constitutional, I’d have never looked harder. Guess I gave the stare where the serpent slid out just ’cause I was so happy he left. Between the trough and the shed wall was a concrete block that had been giving the snake a cool hiding place. The tip of something else was cached there.

  I dismounted, leaned, extending my chest and belly over the low water trough and avoiding the electric wire that ran across the works. Leaned ’til the backs of my thighs hollered ‘whoa’ but I could move the block so the snake wouldn’t come back.

  A leather scabbard was secreted there, holding a knife with a beautiful bone handle. I reached, got it, then eased back into a normal position and mounted up again.

  Donna still stood near the tractor, being brave. After a time, she scrambled her gelding up the ridge and moved him through the shed to pin the gate open. We stared around the east side for the bull that was nowhere to be seen but cattle on the federal land to the north looked up as I rode through with Charley.

  Somewhere out on that land, Slowpoke had found Arielle Blake’s gloved hand. And apparently, the sheriff’s men had found the rest of her body. Why did Guy and his buddy get sent fifteen miles away to look for Arielle around Keeper Lake? I wondered about Stan Yates, the wind farmer, who’d brought Arielle’s cat to the vet after she’d disappeared, and who was now buying the back of the Buckeye ranch on a handshake deal.

  I grabbed my saddle cantle and twisted around to eye the land to the west where I’d spent the whole day. White turbines turned in a lazy breeze in the distant orange light of what would be sunset in another hour or so.

  “See something?” Donna called.

  “Is it Stan Yates who’s buying your land?”

  “Only neighbor we have.” She waved a hand westward where the Yates land abutted her west pasture out here north of the ravine.

  “This is a dying way of life,” Donna said. “People hate stock being on the federal grazing land.”

  Some people did make a lot of noise about private cattle on public land, that’s true. These tend to be people who think meat comes from a grocery store, never acknowledging that first it was a steer that, if it had a decent life, grew up grazing somewhere.

  Donna rode farther onto the scrub country ready to remind any cattle that picked up speed coming down the hill that they really did need to go through the gate, instead of just coasting on by the shed. Her other job would be to count the stock as they came through the gate onto the pasture where the newly shod range horses were stringing out.

  It was nice work, nice land.

  Rather than scramble the buckskin gelding up the steepest and rockiest part of the country back of the shed, I rode beyond to where it leveled and turned the horse around there, waiting for cows in the scrub. Past the far brushy area, the land promised enough view to afford me a chance to run my horse clear of the bull if he showed up on the wrong side of the barbed wire.

  The brush promised something else, too.

  “Come bye,” I told Charley.

  Would have pleased a few grumpy taxpayers, the way my dog cleared the Chevigny cattle off the federal lease land out back of that shed. He was a while working, but Donna and I just sat steady on our horses, trusting Charley to do the job.

  “Should be another five pair,” Donna said after a bit.

  Charley’s posture showed he already knew this. Away he went, soon pushing eight toward us, paralleling the east pasture. The border fences separating out the federal rangeland from the Chevigny ranch were another interesting matter. With our Escape the Bull plan being to gun the horses through the shed after the loose cattle, Donna slamming the gate soon as we were clear, I was not liking that sagging look of the old fence. It surely did look tired.

  Donna saw me frowning at the old barbed wire while Charley circled for two final stragglers. Though the Buckeye had the responsibility for the fencing that marked the start of the leased land, fencing efforts had clearly been directed to the home pastures instead.

  “Those strands are new,” Donna hollered in her defense, pointing in the general direction of the electric wire that ran up the long slope of the hogback, cutting the west and east fields from each other. “He was fixing to keep some stock out here year-round, rodeo stock, and thought he needed something more trustworthy than the old fence here.”

  “Used to be barbed wire between the two pastures, huh?” I hate barbed wire. And I was about to ask Donna about the rodeo stock business plan that was no more when Charley swooped through the barbed wire fence into the east pasture. He saw the last two cattle needed more distance between him and them to not feel pressured, so he used adjacent land to reduce his power over the final pair of cattle he was moving.

  “Used to be.”

  Jabbering got put away because Dragoon bellowed, filing a complaint about the other cattle being moved and worse, a dog being in his pasture.

  Charley gave a little leap at the last two cows he was pushing and even though they were on the other side of the saggy barbed wire, they obeyed him, picked up speed, heading for the shed. I rode toward the breezeway with the eight.

  From deep in the Buckeye’s east field, the bull charged Charley.

  All I could do was holler a warning to my great dog as I pointed the Quarter Horse at the gate and hunkered down to stay put and not slow him up. In that short sprint, my eyes teared from the wind and my heartbeats ran over each other. I heard Dragoon picking up speed, coming at us for sport. I didn’t exactly feel like I was about to run out of horse, but then, I didn’t want to find out either. Cattle flowed with me, as we passed through the gate, then they passed me, joining the range horses.

  Donna shot her horse through the gate behind us and sank back on a pull-rope, ready to snap the gate closed the second she cleared it.

  Even after I heard the gate clack shut behind me, I put off feeling any safer. I expected Charley had gone back through the barbed wire onto the federal land. Now that Donna had closed the gate, the barbed wire snugged tighter.

  “The bull respects a fence.”

  That didn’t sound too likely to me. Bulls can walk through an awful lot of fences and the rest they can take down by scratching their heads and fannies on the posts.

  Charley was circling wide. I thought how stupid I had been the other day to be afoot near the bull just to pick up that old horseshoe, or twenty minutes earlier, to pick up that knife.

  “Charley,” I barked at the boy, “That’ll do. Get out of there now.” I waved my arm, telling him to go wide to get to me.

  The bull snorted across the barbed wire at the dog once, twice, then pawed. His horns were wicked long, pointy enough to gore anything unlucky enough to be in his path.

  Charley turned and faced the coming bull like he should have, but then got himself to the west pasture side by ducking under the barbed wire and coming on from the federal land rather than the bull’s field. If that monster kept a coming and splintered the gate like his body was built to do, things would have got ugly.

  But Dragoon stayed there and looked like we were forgotten. The deed was done and we set to ride in.

  With her ranch stock shod for dispersal and her cattle now all in from the federal land, Donna said she felt a few things were getting organized. I suggested she get her tractor put away in the shed.

  She grimaced and nodded, then shook her head. “One back tire’s flat. Hadn’t noticed that before. ’Course, I hadn’t looked at it too close, been avoiding it.”

  When she let that hang, I couldn’t help but say, “That’s understandable.�
�

  “It’s been hard, since he died.”

  “I’d imagine so.”

  “All on my own here. Past time for me to take care of that tractor though, you’re right about that.”

  I hadn’t noticed the flat tire either. The tractor was one of the old style tricycle built rigs, two skinny wheels up front, right close together, badly balanced. It wasn’t going anywhere—least of all back up that hogback to the shed—without the tire being fixed. What was needed was to haul the tire into town for fixing.

  We rode in silence. The sound of our saddles creaking and the horses’ hooves thudding in dust and clinking on stones made good enough background noise for my tastes. As the barn drew near and my second day working at the Buckeye was about done, it seemed time to try to say something kind of nice. After all, the woman talked about her husband dying.

  I thought about Loretta Pritchard’s warning. I thought about Melinda Kellan watching everything and asking after things that were none of her business. I remembered Earl Delmont’s wife’s words. Then Sonny Weatherby’s genuine sorrow when I’d mention the daughter.

  “You know, you’re not alone. You and Cam, um, been here a long time, got a lot of friends.”

  “Who?” Donna said this real pointed-like, near snapping. It fussed me into confusion but good.

  I tried again.

  “Cam,” I said, frowning, catching on with my usual Molasses-at-the-North-Pole speed.

  Donna swung her head away like I’d done her dirty. “You’re being mighty familiar. His name was Cameron.” She nudged her horse to a lope.