Slickrock (Gail McCarthy Mystery) (6 page)

Besides a brief, muffled “Morning,” Lonny’s attention remained on breakfast. He ate neatly and steadily, in a workmanlike fashion, until all food items had been dispatched. Then, cradling a cup of coffee in his hands, he leaned back in his chair, with the air of one who had just completed a pleasant chore, and smiled at me.

I took a sip of weak but very hot coffee and smiled briefly. “Have you heard anything about that guy…Bill? I asked.

Lonny’s smile faded, but his green eyes looked clear and untroubled as they rested on mine. Apparently last night’s distress had departed.

“I heard Ted went to call the hospital,” he said. “I don’t know any more.”

We looked at each other; after a moment his eyes crinkled at the corners. “So, are we going for a ride?”

“I guess so.”

True to form, Lonny was now focused on the day’s possibilities. He didn’t carry pain around much; a night’s sleep usually restored him to his typical optimistic good humor. A nice trait, I had always thought; it was only lately that I’d begun questioning its implications.

“What do you say we ride to the cow camp at Wheat’s Meadow and have a look at Ted’s cattle. It’s only a few miles; it ought to be a good warm-up for your horses.”

“All right.” I’d made the short ride to Wheat’s Meadow before, using Ted’s horses. The trail was good and there wasn’t too much rock. About what Gunner and Plumber needed.

“And you get to ride over the bridge.”

“Yeah.”

A mile out of the pack station, the main trail crossed Crazy Horse Creek in the middle of a steep canyon, via a stout wooden bridge. In Lonny’s packing days, the trail had taken a lengthy detour to reach a spot where the creek could be forded. Ted had built and placed the bridge (via helicopter) in the early days of his tenure. The cowboys reckoned it saved them half an hour in each direction.

This was great, and of course, all Ted's horses were quite used to crossing the bridge. Mine, however, weren't. I'd taken them on numerous trail rides in the coastal hills around Santa Cruz in preparation for this trip, and a couple of these rides had included small bridges. Gunner and Plumber hadn't been crazy about them, but they'd agreed to walk across them, despite being nervous about the hollow echo their hooves made on the wooden planks. None of these bridges, though, bore much resemblance to the Crazy Horse Creek bridge, which spanned a hundred feet, with a drop of a couple of hundred to the crashing water.

"Better to go across it following me the first time," Lonny said.

"Yeah," I agreed. I had thought of this.

"So, what do you think? We'll saddle up in an hour or so, after you've had breakfast and the horses have finished theirs."

"All right." I was about to ask Lonny which horse he planned to take when Ted walked into the room.

Instantly our eyes swiveled to him.

Ted stood by the end of the table, his round face quiet. "Bill didn't make it," he said.

SIX

Damn." Lonny stood up. "Did he make it to the hospital?"

"They said he died there." Ted's voice was uninflected.

We were all quiet. I thought about the man lying under the night sky wanting to die. I hadn't saved him.

Lonny and Ted were still staring at each other. Aside from Lonny's angry "damn," neither man showed much recognizable emotion. And yet I was quite aware that both were very upset.

Bill Evans had been part of their world; he was one of the family. Such were not supposed to give up, give in, put a bullet into their heart. They were supposed to carry on.

I tried to think of something comforting to say. Nothing seemed possible. We all stood in silence.

Lonny turned abruptly toward me. "There isn't a thing we can do now," he said. "I'll go saddle the horses."

Without waiting for any response I might have made, he banged out the screen door at the back of the room; I watched his long, hasty stride as he headed toward the barn.

Ted looked at me questioningly.

"We're going to ride up to Wheat's Meadow," I said. "Give my horses a chance to get used to the rock, and the bridge," I added.

Ted nodded, still not saying anything. For a moment he reminded me of a small boy, mute and sad.

"Do you want to come with us?" I asked.

He hesitated. His eyes were blank, all their playful sparks in abeyance.

"I could have a look at those cattle," he said at last.

"Yeah, you could," I agreed. "Let me just go up and use the bathroom and I'll be right with you guys."

When I got to the barn ten minutes later, three horses were saddled and tied to the hitching rail, Gunner among them. Plumber stood next to him with the pack rig on his back, but no pack bags. I walked over and checked the cinches.

It was like Lonny to have saddled my horse as well as his. I couldn't decide whether I was mildly pissed off that he didn't let me deal with my own livestock, or mildly grateful that he had done one of my chores for me.

Tightening the cinch on Gunner, I looked at the other two saddle horses. The bay was Chester, Lonny's young horse. The buckskin I recognized as Hank, the horse Ted usually rode.

Ted and Lonny emerged from the barn, carrying bridles; I noticed Lonny had hung Gunner's bridle on the saddle horn. I got it off and offered my horse the bit. Opening his mouth obligingly, Gunner accepted the metal bar; I pulled the bridle on over the halter and fastened the lead rope around the saddle horn with a couple of half hitches. This would make the horse easy to tie up if need be.

Ted was tying saddlebags on Hank. "I brought us some lunch," he said.

Lonny carefully fastened a long case made of PVC pipe to Plumber's pack rig.

"You plan on doing some fishing?" I asked.

"Might as well," he said. He patted Plumber's neck. "Just about the right kind of a load, huh kid?" Plumber sniffed Lonny's elbow and then tucked his nose into the crook of his arm. Lonny rubbed the horse's forehead and smiled at me. "What a puppy dog he is."

"I know," I said. "I like him that way."

No need to justify my preference for friendly horses to Lonny; he felt the same as I did. Ted, however, was a different matter. Like many cowboys, he treated his horses standoffishly; a slap on the rump was about all they got in the way of affection.

Ted swung up on Hank. I called Roey. I had left her to wait on the pack station porch, something she was reasonably good about. In a minute she appeared from that direction, bounding through the grass. She ran up to the group of us and barked happily. She knew what the horses meant.

"Be quiet," I said, as I swung up on Gunner.

Lonny handed me Plumber's lead rope and climbed on Chester. The little bay started to move off as Lonny got on; Chester was a restless, lively horse who always wanted to do something. Lonny hung in one stirrup for a moment before he was able to get his right leg up and over the horse's back.

"You better teach him to stand still," I said. "You're getting a little stiff for that kind of a running mount."

Lonny grinned at me from Chester's back. "I know it. But it's so hard for him. He just wants to go so bad."

Ted grunted. "This so-and-so knows better than to walk off when I get on him."

Lonny and I said nothing. We were both familiar with Ted's ways. Ted clucked to Hank and turned him up the trail; Lonny and I followed. I took a half turn around the saddle horn with Plumber's lead rope, encouraging the little horse to come along. In a moment we were moving down the trail in a caravan, Roey frisking around us.

Deadman Meadow was a vivid, even green in the morning sunlight. The main trail ran along one edge of it, and Crazy Horse Creek ran along the other, with the exception of a narrow channel of water that the original owner of the pack station had created. This branched off the creek shortly after it emerged into the meadow and ran along the pack station side of the little valley. Eventually it fed into the horse corrals, through a couple of big stone troughs and a beautifully constructed granite-lined channel that provided an endless supply of fresh water for the horses.

I looked back at the pack station, seeing a picture right out of an old Western movie. The two-story shingled lodge building, with its long front porch and gray stone chimney, was outlined against a towering granite cliff. Scattered clumps of pines surrounded it, and the meadow spread out like a carpet in front of it. Add in the old barn and wooden corrals with their granite troughs, and picturesque was a mild description.

Turning, I gazed up the valley to where Relief Peak raised a snowy head in the sun, feeling a sense of amazement that I was actually here, riding down this trail on Gunner. I still couldn't quite take it in.

Lonny and Ted rode ahead of me, Roey scampered alongside, and Plumber plodded behind. I watched Gunner's black-tipped red ears, seeing them flick forward curiously, cock back toward me, and flick forward again. The old cowboys used to say that you could tell a good horse by the way he "works his ears."

Ted had fallen back beside me, and I glanced over at Hank. His ears moved forward and back, like Gunner's. I smiled at Ted. "How come you always ride him?" I asked.

"Oh, I like him," Ted said, a little sheepishly.

I studied the horse. He had some obvious faults; he carried his head too high on a neck that was too straight, and he had one front leg that was noticeably turned out. On top of which, he was jigging a little as we moved along the trail, and I'd noticed before that this habitual prancing was a trait of his-a trait most cowboys are not fond of. But he did, indeed, seem likable, with his bright gold buckskin color, kind eye, and good attitude.

"He's not too smart," Ted said, "but he's willing." He laughed. "He's a good son of a bitch. I tell the kids I keep him for my own riding horse 'cause he's got a smooth trot. But I just like him."

I smiled back at him, knowing what he meant. Liking a particular horse was a lot the same as liking a particular human. Often the feeling was inexplicable, as much because of as despite what others might regard as faults.

We were almost at the end of the meadow now. I glanced at the spot where Bill Evans's sports car had been, and noticed that Lonny turned his head away, keeping his eyes on Relief Peak. None of us said a word.

We started up the steep piece of trail that led out of the meadow. The horses were on granite now, but the trail had been blasted out by crews with dynamite and carefully built, and the footing was good. Gunner seemed confident, following Hank and Chester. I kept a careful eye on Plumber, but the sheer drop off one side to the boulder-strewn creek below didn't seem to intimidate him any more than it did the others. Like Gunner, he cocked an alert ear at the noisy water occasionally, but both horses picked their way over the rockier sections of the trail like good mountain ponies and seemed happy enough to be there. Gunner stopped dead when he saw the bridge, though.

I couldn't really blame him. It was a narrow one-horse-wide wooden ramp, and the railings only reached about to stirrup height. It looked insubstantial as hell, stretching from one rim of the canyon to the other, with the long drop beneath it to the cascading roar of the creek. At first sight most people tended to stop, as Gunner was doing now, and stare at it apprehensively.

Lonny smiled back over his shoulder at me. "He'll follow the other horses," he said reassuringly.

I nodded. Hank was on the bridge now, and Chester followed him. I clucked to Gunner and urged him forward. He obeyed, but I could feel his trepidation. Plumber was leaning back a little on the lead rope, but he was coming, too. No horse likes to be left behind.

The bridge was spooky enough, even for me. The horse's hooves banged hollowly on the wooden floor, the water far below crashed and echoed on the canyon walls, and the sense of being exposed and vulnerable, high above the railing, was extreme. If a horse did jump, and either he or you went off, you'd be dead for sure.

We made it across with no problems and began the mile of steep switchbacks on the other side to reach the top of Camelback Ridge.

"Are there many bridges like that in this part of the Sierras?" I asked Lonny, as we climbed.

"A few. You're liable to meet a couple of them, the way you're planning to go." Lonny knew my proposed itinerary; he'd helped me plan this trip last winter. I wanted to get to several of the high mountain lakes that I'd heard about for years but never seen. And I wanted the easiest possible route. After all his years of packing, Lonny was a veritable mine of information.

"Sure you don't want some company?" Lonny grinned at me; he knew what my answer would be. It had been somewhat of a sore spot initially, but as time had passed Lonny had accepted and understood my need to go on this trip alone. Goal-oriented himself, he had a lot of sympathy for my desire to achieve a dream I'd held for so many years.

I smiled back at him as the horses worked their way up the ridge. All the time, half my mind was on Gunner; I kept a light feel of him through the reins, guiding him to the easier side of the trail, checking him when he started to hurry. Lonny, in contrast, left Chester's reins completely slack, allowing the horse to pick his own course and speed. Chester had been up in these mountains several times in the last few months; he understood about rock.