her up the mountain, and Clay cast her a glance, wondering, no doubt, about her choice of routes. This way wasn’t faster.
“Daylight is burning,” he said.
“I know.” She increased her speed and leaned forward, as if that would make them climb the hill quicker.
“Did you go out with him?”
She had to think for a minute about who he meant.
“No. No, of course not.”
“He’s got twice your herd.”
“But not enough land to graze them. He’ll have to sell some or apply for another permit.”
“Or add them to the communal herd.”
She and Clay shared a concerned look.
“Can you tell if he is the one who cut the fences?”
“Maybe.” He toyed with his hat. “Let’s start on the lower pasture?”
“Sure.” She’d have to drive by the upper area where the shooting had been. Would the police still be there? “Then I want you to see the road and the place where the tribe is taking fill. They’ve leveled a wide area, for their trucks, I guess.”
“To get at the hillside?”
“All they told me was that pasture permits didn’t keep them from timbering the forest or exercising mineral rights. But this isn’t timbering. Well, some is.”
“What do you mean?”
“They aren’t choosing which trees to take to thin the forest or clear the brush or whatever. They clear-cut a patch in the middle of the forest about fifty-by-fifty feet.”
Clay frowned and rubbed the brim of his hat with his thumb and index finger, deep in thought.
Both she and Clay stretched their necks as they passed the new gravel road leading into the forest, but she saw nothing remarkable and no evidence of police activity. Whoever had shot at them was long gone. They passed the spot where his truck had been parked and arrived a few minutes later at the lower pasture, where most of her remaining cows milled close to the fence.
Izzie wished she had risked the shorter ride, as the sun was already descending toward sunset. It had been hard to give up the long days of August, but the air was already cool up here at the higher elevations, and so she shrugged into her denim coat, then realized Clay did not have one.
Clay pointed at her rifle, hooked neatly to her gun rack behind the seats.
“Take that,” he said.
She did. He had told her to take one of her rifles but left the second firearm in place. Was that because he knew she was a better shot or for some other reason?
“You had a gun earlier,” she said checking the load and adding a box of cartridges to her coat pocket for good measure.
“Have to. Part of my job.” He tried to step past her. She blocked his path. He stopped and faced her.
“Why don’t you own a gun, Clay?”
“No one wants to see an ex-con with a rifle in his hands.”
“But you weren’t charged with a felony. You are allowed to own one, right?”
“Right.”
He raked his fingers past his temples and lowered his hat over his glossy black hair that brushed the collar of his shirt.
“Can we get started?”
She extended an arm in invitation. He continued, walking the highway, scanning the ground.
“Do you think the police are done investigating up there?” she asked, indicating the site of the shooting. “I didn’t see any activity.”
“For the day, maybe. But I’m not poking around in their crime scene.”
Clay already had his eyes on the ground; she kept hers on the trees far above them, perhaps two miles away. For a shot you would need a scope and some luck to make the target. But still she held her rifle ready as she searched for more gunmen.
She followed behind him as he walked the highway. No one drove past. This road was too far from anything or anyone and was rarely used, except for today, of course.
Clay headed toward the pasture, and all the curious cows that had crowded the fence line fled in the opposite direction. She resisted the urge to count them.
He had already stepped through the fencing and stood lifting the upper strand of barbed wire to make her passage less difficult. Then he continued on, following some trail clear only to himself. She could see the routes the cows took along the fence line. She followed until he stopped and then glanced past him at the knee-high yellowing grass. The parallel tracks of a small vehicle were clear even to her.
“What the heck is that?” she said.
“ATV. Came from up there where the fence was cut. Saw the tracks this morning, but with the shooting, it slipped my mind until you showed up in my driveway. He rode down this way, in a circle, gathering your herd. Cattle tracked that way.” He pointed.
“He?” she said.
“Could be a she. Won’t know unless they get out of the vehicle.”
They walked a bit farther on. The grass was flat by the fence. She could imagine her cattle pressed up against the barbed wire.
“Stopped here and then headed that way.” He pointed back the way the vehicle had come.
“What was it doing on my land?” She had a sick feeling in her stomach as she looked at the grass flattened on both sides of the fence line. They’d exited there. But how?
Clay advanced to the fence and touched one of the wires. It fell, snagging the one below it and bringing that down, as well. Clay pointed to the splice, where someone had reconnected the cut line exactly beside one of the barbs using thin pieces of wire.
“You’ve been rustled,” said Clay.
“But they didn’t steal them.”
“No. Just drove them to the road and called the livestock manager so we’d come scoop up your cows.”
“Who made the call?”
“Don’t know. But you best ask and take a few photos of this. You got a phone that does that?”
She shook her head. Clay withdrew an older model smartphone and began photographing the line and the break and the one remaining patch. Then he photographed the pasture and, for good measure, took a short movie.
“That should do it.”
“I’m calling the cops again,” she muttered.
“Let’s check up top first.”
She
