Lone Creek

26

Laurie hadn't told me much that I didn't already know. I was still skeptical about her motives, and I had a strong sense that she'd evaded my question about what had set Balcomb off this morning. But she'd convinced me that I'd damned well better keep him on my radar until I was sure he was really done with me. Then there was Gary Varna nosing around.

All together, it got me thinking that as long as I had time on my hands, I'd be wise to find out as much as I could about what was going on behind the scenes. Information might be my best defense, and possibly my only one.

I decided to start with somebody who'd be easy to approach-Elmer Stenlund, the ranking cowboy at Pettyjohn Ranch, who'd been present yesterday at my confrontation with Balcomb. Elmer was an old friend, rock solid in all ways, and I was sure he was sympathetic to my situation. He'd lived on the ranch most of his life until it was sold; then he'd bought a little house near Scratchgravel Hills. The new place was closer to town and easy to maintain, and with his kids gone and his wife having died a few years back, he was glad for neighbors. But I knew that the real reason he'd moved was that he didn't like Balcomb any more than I did.

Still, I was a shade uneasy. Elmer had been Reuben Pettyjohn's right-hand man since before I was born, with a connection and loyalty that went so deep they were impossible to fathom. For sure, he'd know by now that Kirk had disappeared. If he'd also heard that there was a shadow over me, that might change things. But if so, he'd be straight about it; and as stock manager, he was my best bet for finding out where those slaughtered horses had come from.

I found a phone booth on Euclid, the long commercial strip that became the highway west to Missoula. As I got out of my truck, I realized I'd subconsciously picked a place that was clear across town from the phone where I'd called Balcomb. It was silly, but that was the way I was starting to think.

"Elmer, it's Hugh," I said when he picked up. "How's it going?"

"I'm OK. How about you?"

"I've been better. Things were settling down. But now there's trouble over Kirk."

"Yeah, I talked to Reuben a couple times. I'd of figured he was out chasing tail, but I guess he still ain't turned up."

"I've got a feeling I'm a suspect, Elmer. Gary Varna came to my place and grilled me pretty good."

His pause was so shocked I could almost hear it. It came as a relief.

"The hell," he said. "Where's he getting that?"

"Because of the flap yesterday, mainly. Kirk standing guard on me with that rifle."

"Aw, for Christ's sake. Nobody'd take him that serious-it's just Kirk."

My relief deepened.

"There's some other strange stuff going on I'd like to run by you," I said. "OK if I swing out there for a few minutes?"

"Sure, I ain't doing nothing. Watching one of them ball games where nobody ever gets a hit. Pitchers' duel, I guess they call them."

"Well, if you're feeling restless, how about I buy you a drink?"

"You know, that don't sound too bad," he said. "I got a few things I could stand to take care of in town anyway."

"When's good?"

"Oh-why don't you give me an hour, maybe a little more."

"Red Meadow?" I said, naming his favorite watering hole.

"That'll do 'er. See you there."

It was just three o'clock. I wouldn't have time to check out other possibilities, and I was too owly to do anything practical like buying groceries. I was tempted to go straight to the Red Meadow and get a head start, but that was a bad idea.

I got back in my truck and drove on west to where the town pretty much ended and the Rockies started. Then I turned off to the veterans' cemetery at Fort Harrison.

Laurie's words about not feeling at home anywhere kept resonating in my head. Until yesterday, I'd considered myself about as well off as a man could be-broke, maybe, but free in all the ways that counted, at least to me. I had good health, a marketable skill, a place to live that was all my own, and, above all, I wasn't beholden to anyone.

But while she couldn't have realized it, she'd stabbed her finger right into that old wound. What I'd scarred it over with was really a patch rather than true healing-an illusion of freedom. It was the crutch I needed to get by, and it worked pretty well. I didn't often have to face a reminder that, at heart, I'd given up.

And with Celia on my mind anyway, it had triggered more thoughts of her. I knew she'd felt that same thing. We'd never talked about it, but it had been the basis of the bond between us. Her fantasies of a storybook life as Mrs. Pete Pettyjohn were her own crutch.

Maybe Pete had sensed this, and he hadn't been able to handle knowing that he wasn't enough for her, and that even if he bucked his mother's opposition and married Celia, the marriage would inevitably come crashing down. I'd come to wonder if in his black drunken depressions he'd seized on a way of sheltering them both in the only way he could see.

It was easy to imagine that death would be the cure.

The afternoon was clouding over with dark blue-gray strata, driven by an agitating breeze. At this hour the cemetery was deserted. A lot of people came out to pay their respects after church, but the rush was over. The headstones were mostly small and uniform, laid out in rows with military precision, an exactness found after life ended but rarely available during it. Many were decorated with flowers or wreaths, and some had carefully tended plants growing from the earth.

My father's had none of those things, and I felt a pang of shame. I hadn't been here for a while-more than a year, and now that I thought about it, closer to two. It wasn't a ritual that I observed on any particular dates. Sometimes it felt right, and at other times necessary. I stood there for a minute or so, then walked out into the bleak rolling prairie.

The old man had been like many others of his time and place, genial but distant. He'd grown up on a ranch, and in a way, he'd raised his family like we were stock. As long as things operated smoothly, he let us run, and he busted his ass to make sure we got all of what we needed and some of what we wanted. But like most of those men, he also had an iron-hard edge that you didn't want to cross. By and large, things operated smoothly.

Far and away the most serious time I ever saw that dangerous side of him was a couple of weeks after Celia died. I hadn't been sleeping well. Late on a Saturday night, I heard the house's front door close, the way it had the time she'd come home from her date and lain beside me. Half in a dream, I tiptoed down the hall to the top of the stairs.

My father was just about to walk out the door. He had his service pistol in his hand and was shoving it into his coat pocket.

He turned to look up at me. I'd seen him angry plenty of times, but this was beyond anger. There was a coldness in his eyes that froze me motionless.

Then his face softened-not with love, but with the wry understanding that he'd been caught. He put down the pistol, sat on the couch, and started taking off his boots. I went back to bed, scared and heartbroken. I didn't comprehend what I'd seen, but somehow it brought home the reality that she wasn't coming back.

As I'd gotten older, I had fit the incident into the overall scenario I constructed. It started with Celia informing Pete that she was pregnant. He knew his mother was dead set against marriage. That left him trapped between the two women in a vise of stress he couldn't handle. I could easily envision Celia taunting him as he waffled, and him losing his head like he had when he'd beaten me at her slight goading-except that this time, he took his rage out on her.

Then his wealthy, powerful family had stepped in to protect the son who carried their lineage and their hopes, quashing an autopsy because it would have shown her pregnancy and injuries not consistent with the supposed cause of death. Their consolation gift to her parents was really a buy-off.

My father had been gone from home all evening before I saw him with the gun-probably drinking. I had come to believe that he'd suspected the cover-up, and had decided to call on Pete or Reuben and find out the truth. But he'd seen me crouched on the stairs and turned back-not from fear of prison or even of getting killed, but from realizing that he still had his family to care for.

He didn't take well to being helpless, and he was stonewalled by powers that he couldn't counter without damaging our lives. The fight seemed to slip out of him after that, and more and more, it was like he was going through the motions. When he learned that he had terminal pancreatic cancer, he seemed almost relieved.

I had to admit that my scenario was pure speculation. I'd never found any tangible reason to believe anything other than that Celia had been thrown by a horse. And while Pete had sentenced himself and carried out the sentence, some part of me wished I'd never awakened that night and stopped my father from whatever truth he might have uncovered.