The Winslow Incident (22 page)

Just after she carved the corner
of the driveway and turned back onto the road—her rear tire spinning out
until she recovered and opened up full throttle—she heard a sound, like
pfftt.

She had time to worry,
Where’s
Jinx?
before he ran right in front of her.

She pulled up on the handlebars
and jerked hard to the right, begging gravity to let up
just this once.

Jinx never even yelped when the
front tire of the bike came crashing back down.

Then she was down too, the full
weight and force of her body plus the bike bearing down on her right elbow with
a shatter and shock that blacked her out.

T
anner knew something major must be going down
when his uncle busted into his room and told him to get his ass up before the
sun was even shining.

Ignoring the dull ache in his leg,
Tanner scrambled into some shorts and his Sweet Leaf rolling papers t-shirt,
the one that almost got him kicked out of the state fair until he promised to
wear it inside out.

He hustled downstairs and outside.
And what he saw out there next to the barn was pretty interesting.

Against the sun just coming over
the mountaintop, the light still fuzzy across the ranch, fifteen cowboys sat on
horseback. He was nervous and excited to see that they all carried rifles.

His uncle rode up and put a hand
down to him. “Come on, kid, this’ll put hair on your chest.” When Tanner took
his hand, Pard yanked him up onto Blackjack’s back behind him.

Tanner didn’t feel fully awake yet
except for his nose smelling the horses as they rode behind the rest of the men
in the direction of the south pasture, in silence until Pete Hammond reined
back his horse and waited for Blackjack to catch up. Tanner noticed that his
uncle’s right-hand man was looking a lot older and even more grizzled than he
had just yesterday.

When they pulled alongside, Pard
asked Pete, “Notify Sparks?”

“Yeah, told him what to expect.
Nate Winslow, too.” Then more quietly Pete said, “It’s a waste.”

“Got any better ideas?” Pard
asked.

“Find Simmons, run more tests,
figure out for certain what it is. Could be lichen like in fifty-eight. Or
arsenic leached into the creek.”

Tanner noticed that Pete pronounced
creek as
crick
like an old fart out of a shitty western.

“You’re talking days,” Pard said,
“weeks maybe. What if it
is
hoof-and-mouth?”

“You know it’s not.”

“I’ve got no choice but to nip
this thing in the bud, Pete. Because if I don’t and it spreads to the rest of
the herd—then
word
will spread and I’ll be out every which way
there is.”

“Best to know for certain, is all,”
Pete said.

Pard lowered his voice even
further. “Half a herd can be replaced. Hell, even the whole herd. But once a
reputation’s ruined, it stays ruined. I promise you it’ll be a stain that won’t
come clean.”

“Your decision.” Pete rode back up
to the rest of the men.

For once Tanner kept his mouth
shut. Their demeanor told him that now was not the time to be a smartass.
Seeing that huge bull Indigo at the rodeo—twisted and bleeding from the
neck while being dragged behind the corral—had been enough to convince Tanner
that once the ranch hands decided to get down to business, they didn’t screw
around.

When they reached the south pasture
Tanner was expecting to see something harsh, but not this. The cowboys were
working a herd of fifty or so sick cattle into a trench that looked to have
about the same dimensions as an Olympic-sized swimming pool. With dogs yipping
at their hindquarters, some of the cattle could barely walk their legs shook so
bad, and many gave out completely once they were in the trench and the dogs
withdrew. Next to the backhoe, a bulldozer sat at the ready.

As soon as all the cattle were in,
the bulldozer driver pushed a heap of dirt into the mouth of the trench. The
cattle bellowed. There was no way out for the animals, and the whole scene was
almost more than Tanner could stomach.

After they dismounted Blackjack,
Pard handed Tanner the reins. “Walk him over and hitch him with the others. Tight.
Understand? And come right back.”

Tanner dragged the resistant horse
through the grass toward several others tethered to the railing of the wood
bridge. “You messed up my leg, gluebag,” Tanner told Blackjack. But he couldn’t
muster any energy to curse the animal further because he wasn’t sure he was up
for whatever was about to happen. He didn’t like that
I’ve made up my mind
to hell with all of you
look on his uncle’s face, didn’t like the reeking
fear of those cows.

By the time he rejoined his uncle
at the trench, a dozen men had gathered at the edge and were staring down at
the confused animals.

Kenny Clark stood tensely in
position where the opening had been filled, rifle pressed to his cheek.

Pard yelled over to him, “Hey, Ken,
take it easy. Hold up a minute.”

“Okay,” Kenny said, eager as hell.
“But I’m ready whenever you say go, boss.”

Tanner moved close to Pard.
“Simmons said he thinks it might be something they ate. What if that’s all it
is?”

When his uncle swung his head to
frown at him, Tanner instantly regretted saying anything. What did he care
anyway? He wished he could leave.

“Drastic situations call for
drastic measures,” Pard replied, all business, no bullshit.

I don’t want any hair on my chest
, Tanner decided.

Watching the last of the cowboys
assemble at the edge, Pard shouted, “Looks like we’re ready, men.” Then a look
came into his uncle’s eyes—uncertainty maybe but Tanner couldn’t be
sure—before he commanded, “Fire away!”

With pained expressions, the men
shot down into the mass grave. Quickly cocking their rifles, they shot again
while the cattle made horrible sounds. A stampede ensued, but there was nowhere
to go and the big animals tried to clamber over each other and up the sides of
the trench, necks outstretched, hooves scrambling to find purchase in the soft
dirt.

The men cocked and shot faster.

Tanner wanted to turn away but
felt pinned to the spot, paralyzed by what he was witnessing. There was a lot
of blood.

After what felt like a long time,
the shooting slowed. When at last it stopped, Old Pete and a few others
scattered around the trench and leaned out and doused the dead animals in
gasoline.

Before Tanner grasped what was
happening, his uncle handed him a length of board, the tip of which had been
dipped in the fuel. Pard lit the makeshift torch and shoved him by the shoulder
toward the trench. Tanner didn’t know if he could do it, he didn’t
want
to do it, but then all the cowboys were looking at him and his uncle gestured
with eyes that said,
Get the hell over there!

So Tanner walked to the edge—hoping
his knees didn’t give out and he didn’t puke from the putrid smell the dead cattle
gave off—and tossed the torch into the trench.

Nothing . . . until
whroosh
followed by a fast-growing plume that smeared the dawn sky black. And soon the
ghost cries of the animals hanging in the air were drowned out by the obscene
crackle of the fire.

When they returned to the house,
he grabbed a few things and then jumped on the Kawasaki and tore out of there.
Before he hit Loop-Loop Road, he looked back the way he’d come. It was the last
time Tanner ever saw Holloway Ranch.

P
atience sat on the mission-style bench on the
wide front porch of her grandparents’ house, talking to the ghost of her Gram
Lottie.

She preferred spending time here
rather than at her own house because her grandparents paid her a lot more
attention than did her parents, who always treated her as an afterthought. Once
on vacation they’d stranded her at a gas station when they assumed she was
asleep among a jumble of jackets and blankets in the back seat of the car when
in fact she’d gone in to use the restroom. They were completely unaware until a
highway patrol officer pulled them over and informed them they’d left their
child behind a hundred and forty miles ago.

Now Patience gazed down at the
sidewalk. Her Gramps Ben had gone over to Clemshaw Mercantile for what seemed
to be the tenth time that morning.

“Gotta get stocked up,” he’d said.
“Never hurts to be prepared.”

That made movies play through her
mind of earthquakes shaking the wood frame stores until they collapsed and
their windows exploded into the street, of fires racing down Park Street and
all the houses ablaze with flames shooting out their rooftops, and floods
uprooting the big trees in the park before swallowing the town whole.

And although the porch was swaying
somehow, she was frightened to leave it—it seemed more dangerous
out
there.
Too hot, and too many people around, talking loud, looking at her.

Of course, she’d been happy when
Gram Lottie came out from the house to keep her company. She always made
Patience feel safe. Plus it had been so long since they were together, so long
since that awful night when Patience and Hazel tempted fate at The Winslow and
Gram Lottie died and was taken away forever. At least, Patience had thought it
would be forever.

But now Gram Lottie was telling
Patience things that made her feel anxious. How much she looked like her
Great-Great Aunt Sadie, and how Sadie had died too young.

Patience touched the charms on her
bracelet while bits and pieces of the Prospector’s Day picnic photograph in
Hazel’s foyer flashed through her mind: dark hair, white skin, spectral eyes.

“Everyone knows Evan Winslow
drowned Sadie Mathers when she refused his affections,” Lottie Mathers told her
granddaughter. “He lured her to The Winslow, he suggested they take a walk . .
.”

Patience wished her grandmother
would talk about something else, something nice. This was giving Patience a
very bad feeling in her belly. Like when Hazel slapped her. Why did she do
that?
Patience put a hand to her cheek to stop the stinging she still
felt.

“Obviously his workers covered for
him, he paid them well,” Lottie continued. “So he
got away with it.
And
went on to marry Ruby Waring. Had to bring his bride all the way from San
Francisco so she wouldn’t know what a monster he was—and nobody dared to tell
her.”

Lottie paused and Patience hoped
she was finished.

She wasn’t. “After that everyone
forgot about poor Sadie Mathers, except her faithful brother Sterling, who had
suffered to discover her in that pond, with a look frozen on her face not of
peace but eternal torment.”

Patience’s thoughts swirled around
. . . whirling colors. Her brain one of those gigantic, sticky, multicolored
suckers you buy at the fair. She wanted so much just to close her eyes and see
nothing, think nothing. But doing so only made it worse because then images of
dead cats and hanging men and people screwing flared in her brain like
lightning strikes.

So she opened her eyes again and
looked at Gram Lottie, who didn’t look quite right either. In fact, she scared
Patience a little.
No, a lot
, she shivered.

“They buried Sadie in Winslow
family ground,” Lottie told her. “Right above that deep pond, atop the rise
that overlooks the whole mountainside, because it’s such a beautiful spot.”

The word
mountainside
went
spinning through Patience’s mind on a brown ribbon.
Beautiful
was
turquoise. She scratched at the ants crawling beneath her skin. The scratches
burned. Her silver bracelet felt cold against her wrist.

“And that felt so
wrong
to
her brother Sterling, that she should be interred everlasting to the land of
her murderer, that he went back and dug her up and reburied her behind the
church next to a little oak sapling—young and tender, like her.”

Gram Lottie would not stop.
Patience didn’t even bother to try and make her stop. Patience couldn’t stop
shivering either.

“Sterling Mathers never let Evan
Winslow forget that he knew what Evan had done to his sister. So when Evan
thought enough time had passed that he could get away with it again, he killed
Sterling too, in the very same spot, and left your grandfather Ben to be raised
fatherless.

Patience’s mind spun so fast now
that her grandmother’s words became a blur.

“And they tried and they tried to
fill in that pond, but it just kept coming back up wet with the blood and the
tears of the Mathers family.”

Patience could not listen to
another word and although the steps were undulating and difficult to navigate,
she dared to leave the porch.

I
t was tough to make out what Tanner Holloway
was saying to him. Sean could see words sliding out of Tanner’s mouth but they
were so slippery he couldn’t grab hold of them.

Hand outstretched, Sean finally
caught the word
ranch
. . . then
fire.