Slickrock (Gail McCarthy Mystery) (14 page)

"So, what did he say?"

"Not much. He just said it was his horse, and he wanted me to pay for him or give him back. I said I had done what I thought was right and left it at that. So far as I know, the only thing he's done about it is go around telling everyone I stole the horse."

"How does that make you feel?"

Blue Winter shrugged his shoulders. "People can think what they like."

The cowboy ethic in action. Still, there was one thing that puzzled me. "Why would Dan want to do something like that? He's got plenty of money, from all I hear."

Blue Winter shrugged again. "You'd better ask him. He didn't get to be rich by giving money away."

We were both quiet. I stared at the big dun gelding. He was standing quietly, one back foot cocked in a resting pose. Blue Winter's story made sense. There is a gray area when a horse is being "tried." The former owner has relinquished control of him, and the new owner isn't committed to buying him. Problems like this can result. But I wouldn't have thought it was in Dan Jacobi's best long-term interest to take this particular tack.

"Did you hear about Bill Evans?" I asked. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. Talking to Blue about the horse had caused me to drop my guard; I hadn't stopped to think what would follow from the question.

"No, what happened?" Blue's face was as unreadable as ever.

"He shot himself the night before you rode in. Didn't you hear the chopper come to take him out?"

"I heard the chopper. Didn't figure it was any of my business."

More quiet. I waited for him to ask a question.

"Is he dead?" he said at last.

"Yeah."

"That's too bad."

And that was it. Blue Winter nibbled his apple core and volunteered nothing more. I wondered if I wanted to ask him a question or two and decided I didn't. What was it going to achieve? If he knew something about Bill Evans and his suicide, he clearly wasn't going to tell me.

I could tell him the story of my finding the man, but again, why? And I could hardly haul off and ask him if he used to live with Bill Evans's wife.

I began putting my socks and boots on. Blue stood up, all six-and-a-half feet of him. He looked down at me. "Thanks for listening to my story," he said. "I didn't want you to think I stole a horse from Dan."

"I understand. Have a good trip," I added.

"You, too. Maybe we'll run into each other again." Blue was tying his saddlebags back on the dun gelding.

I wondered if he knew more about Bill Evans's suicide than he was letting on. He'd dismissed the whole matter pretty abruptly. Surely that wasn't natural.

He was on his horse now, pack horse in tow. He whistled for his dog, who bounded up obediently. I stood by the side of the creek looking up at him.

He stared down at me for a moment, then touched the brim of his hat briefly. "It was good to see you. Bye, Stormy."

Before I could make any reply, he'd turned and ridden off.

Well, well, well. I watched him disappear down the trail, then set about organizing myself to go. As I tied my own saddlebags back on and tightened cinches, I wondered. I found I'd become very curious about Blue Winter.

THIRTEEN

I made camp at Wilma Lake in good time. It turned out to be a pretty lake, but there were two parties of people in, one group complete with teenagers, rubber rafts, and boom boxes. This, I supposed, was because Wilma, though two days' ride from Crazy Horse Creek, was a short day away from Hetch Hetchy Pack Station. Though I saw no horses in evidence, it was apparent from the amount of stuff both groups had with them that they had been packed in. No doubt the packers had "dropped" these parties and would be back to collect them later.

The worst part of all this was that Wilma was not a huge lake, and fully one half of the shore line consisted of vertical rock wall dropping into blue-green water. Pretty for sure, but providing no campsites. The other half of the lake was open enough, but the two biggest (and best) campsites had been taken by the large parties.

Had I been backpacking, I might have found an obscure ledge somewhere on which to pitch my tent, but my two horses required a patch of level ground and some grass. The only likely-looking spot I saw was right along the trail. A stone ring showed that it was used as a campsite, and there was a good-sized pocket of meadow and a nice rock wall against which to set the tent. But the trail ran right through it.

It isn't good manners to camp alongside a trail, nor did I like to do it; traffic through one's camp is disturbing. But I didn't see that I had much choice. It was either that or park myself cheek by jowl with one of the other groups, which was equally rude.

Reluctantly, I unsaddled and unpacked the horses at my chosen site, then put them both on a picket line out in the meadow. I wouldn't turn them loose, not with this many people around.

Chores done, I wandered about, finding that the river that departed the lake just beyond my camp featured a wonderful granite drop-off festooned with many small waterfalls and bathtub-sized cascading pools. Golden-orange leopard lilies overhung one of these in combination with nodding red and yellow columbines-a vignette more telling than any carefully arranged garden feature I'd yet encountered.

After a brief foray I returned to camp, unwilling to leave the horses for long. Once again I made a drink, collected the jar of peanuts and Walden, and parked my camp chair where the last rays of sunlight would hit me. For an hour I read, sipped, and munched, relatively undisturbed.

Every so often the teenagers in the next camp, who were engaged in water fights out on their rubber rafts, would emit particularly loud squeals and shouts, enough to cause me to look up. It was during one of these brief lifts of the head that I saw the two women.

They were coming toward me on the trail, from the direction of Hetch Hetchy. One tall, one short, both with backpacks on their backs, walking with end-of-the-day weariness. Hetch Het-chy might be an easy day's ride, but it was a good long slog of a hike, and all uphill.

These two hikers looked understandably beat. They also looked miffed as they surveyed the lake with its all-too-obvious complement of campers. I knew how they must feel. Despite the fact that we all know it's unreasonable, those of us who frequent the backcountry always hope to find our destinations of choice pristine and undisturbed. After a long day's journey through the wilderness, it's somewhat of an anticlimax to search for an empty campsite as though you were looking for a vacant space at an RV park.

After a minute the two women halted, not twenty feet from me, and surveyed the situation at Wilma Lake. I watched them idly, wondering where they would choose to camp. If it were me, I thought, I'd cross the creek and camp on the other side. The shorter woman said something to her companion.

I stared. The short women's face was turned directly toward me, with the setting sun full on it. It was Sara. Lonny's ex.

I recognized her with a jolt of emotional resonance all out of proportion to my actual acquaintance with her, which was virtually nil. I'd met her twice, and only briefly then. But she'd been a part of my life for many years, a shadowy, threatening presence, a woman I'd found myself almost fearing.

Sara had left Lonny two years before he and I had started dating, so I had never felt even peripherally responsible for the end of their marriage. Several years later, Sara had decided she wanted to move back in with the man who was still, technically, her husband, and she had been extremely angry when Lonny had chosen to continue his relationship with me. The ensuing fireworks had, more or less, precipitated their divorce. Thus Sara blamed me for, as she had once put it, "coming between" her and Lonny.

I thought this unreasonable, and I'd said so, which hadn't made her like me any better. In short, our one conversation had not been a friendly chat. I regarded her now with considerable apprehension.

How in the world had she happened to appear here and now, on the shore of Wilma Lake, in the Sonora wilderness, just when I happened to be camped here?

It was Sara; I was sure of it. The year since I'd seen her hadn't treated her kindly; she'd gained some weight, cut her hair short, and dyed it blond, none of which was flattering. But she was, quite recognizably, the woman who had worried me and haunted me for so long. Lonny's wife.

His ex-wife, I reminded myself. And the last time I saw her she was dating another man. Sara had no real reason to resent me.

I was still uncomfortable. For a second I contemplated getting up, turning my back, hiding by my horses ... anything to avoid a confrontation.

But self-respect, and for that matter, curiosity won out. I stayed where I was, facing the trail, and waited.

In the quiet evening air, I could hear bits of their conversation. The unknown woman looked somewhat younger than Sara; a Viking of a human being, she was taller than I, perhaps about six-foot-even, with long brown-blond hair in a braid down her back and a strong Scandinavian face.

Sara was addressing her in querulous tones, and I caught the phrases "nowhere to camp," "too noisy," and "too many people."

Eventually the two moved forward again and stopped when they were ten feet from me, just where the trail ran past my camp.

"Hello," the tall woman said.

I looked up from my book. My eyes searched Sara's face. "Hi," I said.

I saw Sara start. She knew me, just as I knew her. Perhaps she, too, had thought about me for years-the woman who had stolen Lonny's devotion away from her, as she would see it.

We stared at each other. On her face I saw a range of expressions-surprise, hostility, and yes, curiosity.

"It's Sara, isn't it?" I said.

She said nothing to me, just looked at her companion. "Lee," she said urgently, "that's Lonny's girlfriend."

The woman so addressed stared at me with equal curiosity, but a complete lack of hostility. She had pronounced smile lines around her eyes and a strong chin. Like Sara, she wore regulation walking shorts and hiking boots, topped with a fleece jacket for the cool evening air.

"Hi," I said again.

For a second it seemed we were at an impasse. Sara, stony-faced, wouldn't look at me. I had no idea what else to say. We all stared awkwardly.

The tall woman finally chipped in with, "I was just going to ask you if you knew of any other good campsites nearby, since this lake seems so crowded."

"It looked like there was a nice spot across the creek," I said.

I watched Sara as I spoke, finding myself fascinated. Perhaps all women who have shared a man have this odd connection. It isn't often friendly, but it's there. He who has loved me has also loved you. In a strange way, I almost felt as if Sara and I were related.

These thoughts raced through my mind in short order as Lee asked me how I'd gotten across the creek. "I didn't," I said. "I just saw a nice spot over there. I guess you'd have to wade."

I didn't quite make it to the end of this statement before Sara interrupted me. "Come on, Lee," she said. "We don't want to talk to her."

Lee looked taken aback at this piece of overt rudeness; I wasn't terribly surprised. Sara had shown herself quite capable of being rude the last time we'd spoken.

To my amazement, I found myself speaking to her. "I didn't take Lonny away from you, Sara. I had nothing to do with the failure of your marriage. You know that."

Why in the world I said it, I had no idea. Perhaps because it had been on my mind for years. Whatever the reason, it just came out of my mouth as though it simply needed to be said.

As I might have expected if I'd thought about it, this direct form of address triggered all the anger that Sara had been some-what unsuccessfully bottling up.

"How dare you say that to me? If it wasn't for you, Lonny and I might have gotten back together. He might have been willing to work on our marriage. You were the reason he wouldn't." The words came tumbling out of Sara with a force and velocity equal to my own.

Something raw leaped inside of me. I looked her right in the eyes. "You know as well as I do that you left Lonny. You found a boyfriend. That was the reason your marriage ended. And I know just how unhappy it was for years before that. You blame me because you don't want to look at your own failure."

Sara's eyes flashed hot sparks at that. "Did you ever once think what a rotten, selfish thing you were doing?" she demanded. "Lonny and I had a long history together. Our marriage wasn't perfect, but we could have saved it if it weren't for you."

Sara's chin tilted up as she said it. Taking a step toward me as if she would have liked to hit me, she stopped abruptly. "Someday you're going to find out what it feels like." She enunciated the words clearly. "You're going to be the one who suffers."

Her fine-boned face looked almost contorted, the somewhat thin-lipped mouth twisted over her teeth. I held perfectly still and wished distinctly that I'd never provoked her.

Her companion seemed as aghast as I was. "Come on, Sara," she muttered. "Let's go." Without a word, Sara turned and marched down the trail in the direction from which I'd originally come. The tall woman followed her, looking back once over her shoulder.