Page 19 of Hell and Gone
“I’m fine,” he forced out. He holstered his pistol and knelt on the other side of the corpse. “You know this man?”
“By sight only. Name is Phillip, I think. He’s a rider for Endless Sky. Been with them a few years, I think. I see him ridin’ with the rest of the hands. He was young. Still learnin’.” Lawrence sat back and ran his gloved hand over his face, exhaling slowly. “He was ambushed.”
“What was he doing up here?”
Lawrence shrugged. “Could have been scoutin’ or runnin’ a range patrol. Checkin’ the borders of their range. Usually you don’t go alone when you do that.”
“He wasn’t alone.” Everett nodded to the bullet wound. “He was shot in the back. That came from someone he didn’t suspect.” His throat closed around his words until he couldn’t breathe.
“You gonna do your thing? Look for a trail?”
Nodding once, Everett pulled out his phone and snapped photos of the corpse, the meadow, the body lying on the ground. He drew back and started his search, looping back and forth in a grid pattern through the grasses. Thirty paces from the corpse, a shine of brass caught his eye. Bending, he snapped a photo of a thirty-aught-six casing. “Might have found the bullet casing,” he called. “Can you grab my backpack?”
Wordlessly, Lawrence retrieved his pack from where Everett had stowed it behind Lantana’s saddle. He held it open for Everett as Everett grabbed a pair of gloves and a plastic bag, then dropped the casing into the bag and sealed it. He stepped back as Everett continued his search, watching in silence.
Whoever had shot the young man dead had covered his tracks well. There weren’t any prints, not through the pasture. Maybe the murderer had never come off his horse. Smart, then, to not leave any boot prints. The only evidence he’d left behind was the bullet casing and a dead body. And there were more than a thousand rifles that fired that kind of ammunition in these parts. If he couldn’t find any other physical evidence, it would be near impossible to tie the murder to the murderer. He could hope there was some kind of evidence on the man’s dead body, or something in his past that led to this bloody outcome. Circumstances sometimes lined up like constellations after the fact, roadmaps that were only obvious in the end. Destination murder.
Sometimes it was just a dirty shot in the back.
He’d almost given up, almost called it in. Sweat dripped down his neck, the sun hot above his collar. He’d ditched his jacket. His eyes pricked, stinging from the sun, the dust, and disappointment. He’d wiped his forehead, adjusted his ball cap. Stretched his neck—
And spotted the track.
A single horse print, like before. Slender, a small horse’s footprint. A lighter horse, like before.
There was a rocky path out of the pasture, free of dirt or fallen leaves. A horse and rider could walk the path for miles, keeping to the rock-covered ground, the smooth stones, and leave no tracks or trail.
Save for where the slender-footed horse had shied away from a sloping rock, a sharp-angled slab of stone that ran into a patch of dirt. One small hoof had landed partway in the break between dirt and stone. The top left arch of the horse’s shoed hoof had struck stone. But the rest had compressed the dirt, creating a perfect, timeless print.
“I’ve got something!” he shouted. “Another print!”
Lawrence was by his side in a moment, jogging, crouching, breathlessly cursing as he shook his head. “You are onefinepiece of work, Army.”
“There’s always something.” Nothing stayed hidden forever. He’d proven that.
Lawrence opened the backpack for him again, and Everett put together another casting. He laid it carefully and waited for the plaster to dry. In the heat, the bright sun of the afternoon, it didn’t take long. He bagged and tagged the casting, then nodded down the rocky path. “What’s in this direction? Where does this trail go?”
“To the public lands. Off Endless Sky’s range and out into the wild.”
“So anybody could be out there?”
“Sure,” Lawrence said. “Hell of a time for anybody gettin’ this high up, though.”
“There’s a million ways into the Crazies, you said.”
“I did. And seems this rider’s found his own way.” Lawrence pulled out the first casting from Carson’s hanging and held it up, pulled the plastic bag tight across the imprint. He looked from one to the other, comparing.
The narrow hoof, the slender shape. The small shoe. The prints, the castings, matched.
“Two dead men and the same print at both sites.” Lawrence’s gaze flicked to his.
“There’s a murderer here in the Crazies,” Everett said. He held Lawrence’s stare as he spoke, watching for a reaction, for something, anything.
Lawrence’s eyes slid away as his jaw tightened.
* * *
It tookthe rest of the day to make their way back around Crazy Peak and down into Lazy Twenty-Two range, all the way back to the Delaney ranch home. Everett had argued for riding down to Endless Sky’s ranch, since they were on their range and the dead man was an Endless Sky hand, but Lawrence laid it out for him on the map. Endless Sky was truly endless, and riding down to their ranch would have taken two days from the high meadow abutting Crazy Peak and the public lands all the way back down to Endless Sky’s ranch in the basin at the foothills of the mountains.
