Page 42 of Hell and Gone
“And the rustling, it began before the troubles with the truckers? Before the big fight?”
Lawrence nodded.
“When were Carson, Dell, and Aaron fired?”
“January. Hard time to be an out-of-work cowboy.”
“But they landed on their feet pretty quickly.”
He nodded again. “Carson came here, and Dell and Aaron went to Heart’s Rafter.”
“Rustling kept going? You kept losing stock?”
“It slowed in winter, but yeah. We all kept losing stock.”
“Was there ever a break? A month, or however long, where you didn’t lose any cattle?”
He flipped back through his mind, trying to separate the drives, the seasons, the herds coming in and going out. Terry riding up and prattling in his ear, going off about missing cattle again and again. “February. We didn’t lose any stock in February.”
Everett breathed deep, still flat on his back, staring at the trailer’s celling. “And when did Dell and Aaron go missing?”
“Three months ago. April.”
Everetthmmmed. “Why do you think they were murdered when Braddock thinks they just got out of town?”
“Bill Warner at Heart’s Rafter says they vanished overnight. He says he saw them come in for the evening, he remembers talkin’ to ‘em over dinner in the bunkhouse. The next mornin’, nothin’. No tracks, no note, nothin’. Gone.”
“Any sign of a struggle? Or missing horses?”
“Not that Braddock said, or Bill said, neither. No missin’ horses. They just up and vanished in the middle of the night. It spooked the hell out of Bill. Wasn’t that long after he decided to pull out and get gone. Men abducted off your ranch, maybe murdered?” His lips thinned. His throat clenched, and he looked away. He closed his eyes, opened them as the image flashed behind his eyelids again: Carson, swinging in the wind. “Like Carson was. He was taken and he was killed. I think the same thing happened to Dell and Aaron, ‘cept we haven’t found the bodies yet.”
Everett stared at him, not saying a word.
“You don’t like Dell and Aaron, do you?”
“I think they’re rotten sons of bitches without a lick of God damn sense between them. Carson kept them in line, said they could cut a horse and run a herd decent enough. But every time I saw them, they pissed me off. Now, that does not mean I wanted ‘em dead. Or that I’m happy they’re gone. I’d rather have ‘em here pissing me off and know the Crazies are safe.”
Finally, Everett smiled again. Lawrence’s heart skipped a beat. “I didn’t expect this from you, you know.”
“What?”
“I thought you’d be more black and white. I didn’t expect the nuance. For you to think so large.”
“Darlin,’” Lawrence drawled. He arched an eyebrow toward Everett. “Black and white isyou.” Standing, he kissed Everett’s cheek, chuckling at Everett’s shocked look. “C’mon. We gotta get goin’.”
They washed from a bucket of frigid well water pumped from behind the trailer. Lawrence had already pulled out spare clothes for Everett, cowboy jeans and button-downs left behind from years past, and had laid out Everett’s pistol and cell on top of the pile.
“We need a plan.”
“We were huntin’ the rustler hideouts when we heard that shot yesterday. Should we finish the job? Check what’s been happenin’ at the rustler camps?”
“Yes. And I want to see a map again.”
Lawrence’s map was in Trigger’s saddlebag, and Trigger’s saddle was tucked in his horse barn down in the foothills of the Crazies. He rifled through the cupboards and drawers in the trailer until he found an older map, about ten years out of date, and passed it to Everett. “Here, here, and here,” he said, circling the locations on the map, “are where the camps we was aimin’ to search are located.”
“Show me the Heart’s Rafter. I want to know where it is.”
Lawrence drew anXon the map. Overhead, the Heart’s Rafter made the third point of a triangle around Crazy Peak, with Endless Sky and the Lazy Twenty-Two the other two points. Heart’s Rafter land bordered Endless Sky, but there was public land between Heart’s Rafter and the Lazy Twenty-Two.
