Page 42 of Deadly Evidence
He held up his right hand in a scout salute. “Honest.”
The search for the cattle wasn’t going well at all.
“Too bad you don’t have a helicopter,” Dante observed, taking off his hat to wipe his brow. “Lots of the bigger ranches have them.”
“I’ll add that to my Christmas list. In the meantime, let’s fan out over this next ridge. Brady—you head south, toward the ranch road. Dante—keep going east. I’ll go west. Fire a shot in the air if you find a dozen or less, two if you find a big herd.”
The land was vast, but it took a hundred acres of sparse grama grass to support a single cow here. So the cattle tendedto range through great distances, often breaking off into smaller herds, but the one limiting factor out here was water.
They always needed to be within traveling distance of one of the old-fashioned windmills that still whirred with the breezes and drew water into sixteen-foot round galvanized steel watering tanks.
Over two hundred head of stocker cattle were supposed to be in this pasture—young cattle she’d intended to bring up to around seven hundred pounds and then sell at auction to feedlot buyers.
There’d been recent, muddied tracks by one of the water tanks, but so far, she’d seen just a handful of animals—and had only spotted those through her binoculars. Where were the rest?
Anna rode on through gullies and over ridges, scanning the horizon, her frustration mounting as one hour passed, then another.
The distant crack of a rifle, a pause, then two more, in quick succession filled her with relief. Pivoting Duster to the south, she urged the mare into a lope toward the sounds.
Once enough cattle were rounded up and herded into the pen by the loading chute, she could go home to get the aging semi parked behind the barn.
There’d still be time to make it to El Paso this afternoon.
The ride back—a straight shot, this time, rather than one sweeping north and south hunting for signs of the herd—took almost an hour.
At the top of Eagle Butte, she found Dante and Brady waiting for her, where they could be easily seen from a distance.
The corral and loading chute were just on the other side, filled—she hoped—with cattle close to the right weight.
At her approach, Brady and Dante rode down the steep flank of the butte and loped over to meet her.
“I didn’t find any,” she said. “How many do you have?”
Dante and Brady exchanged glances.
“Dante found ten,” Brady said on a long sigh. “I found three.”
“We’ll keep looking—most of them have to be out here somewhere,” Dante added. “It’ll just take time.”
A sudden uneasiness made the back of her neck prickle. “Then why did you fire all those shots?”
“Take a look.”
Brady reined his gelding toward the holding corral and took off at a lope, with Dante and Anna behind him.
At the corral, he stopped and waved a hand toward the loading chute.
Her uneasiness had changed to dread. And now, as she surveyed the scene, her dread turned to outrage.
Fresh truck tire tracks led toward the ranch road.
The sand in the corral had been stirred by milling hoofprints. A lot of them. There was fresh manure in there, too.
Someone had been here. With a potbellied semi, they could have taken a good thirty-five head or more in just one trip.
The chute was miles from the home place and well out of sight. A team of cowboys could have rounded up a nearby herd, loaded them, hit the road in an hour or so, and disappeared without ever being seen.
Perhaps have even returned for a second load.
