Yet another nod from her husband. Strong, silent type?
“But still,” she went on, “we liked it. It was what our families did for generations. Who were we hurting, grazing down weeds and plants that needed to be trimmed anyway for fire risk? Like the elk don’t do the exact same thing? Like the elk don’t deposit their manure right in the streams? That’s something we never did, no matter what anyone says.”
“What’s that?” said Darrel.
“Pollute the water. We made sure the herd always did its business away from the water. We respected the land, a lot more than any do-gooder. You want your healthy environment? I’ll give you your healthy environment: ranching. Animals doing what they’re supposed to be doing, where they’re supposed to be doing it. Everything in its place: That’s the way God intended it.”
Katz said, “Larry Olafson ended all that.”
“We tried to talk to him-to be logical. Didn’t we, Barton?”
“Yup.”
“I telephoned him personally,” she went on. “After we got the court papers. He wouldn’t even take my call. Had some snotty young snip answering the phone who went on like a broken record. ”Mr. Olafson is occupied.“ That was the whole point. We wanted to be occupied with our God-given jobs. He had other plans.”
“You ever reach him?” said Two Moons.
“I had to drive over to Santa Fe, find that art gallery of his.”
“When was this?”
“Couple of months ago, who remembers?” She snorted. “If you call that art. Occupied? He was hanging around, drinking foamy coffee. I introduced myself and told him he was making a big mistake, we weren’t the land’s enemy or his or anyone’s, all we wanted to do was bring our beef to market, all we needed was a few more years and then we’d probably retire, so could he please lay off.”
Katz said, “Were you really planning on retiring?”
She sagged. “No choice. We’re the last generation interested in ranching.”
Katz nodded sympathetically. “Kids have their own ideas.”
“Ours sure does. Kid, singular. Bart Junior. He’s an accountant over in Chicago, went to school at Northwestern and stayed there.”
“He does good,” said Bart. “He don’t like getting dirty.”
“Never did,” said Emma. “Which is fine.” Her expression said it wasn’t.
“So,” said Two Moons, “you told Olafson you needed a few more years before retirement. What did he say?”
“He gave me this look. Like I was a slow child. Said, ”None of that is my concern, dear. I’m speaking for the land.‘“ Emma’s voice had dropped to a baritone parody- the snooty voice of a sitcom butler. Her hands were balled into fists.
“He didn’t want to listen,” said Katz.
“Like he was God,” said Emma. “Like someone died and made him God.”
“Now he’s the one who died,” said Bart. Pronouncing the words quietly but distinctly. It was the closest he’d come to an independent statement since the detectives had arrived. They turned to him.
“Any ideas about that, sir?” Two Moons asked.
“About what?”
“Mr. Olafson’s death.”
“A good thing,” said Bart. “Not a bad thing at all.” He sipped coffee.
Darrel said, “What happened to your hand, Mr. Skaggs?”
“He got ripped by barbed wire,” said Emma. “We had some old rolls of it left over and he was trucking them off to the surplus dealer and he slipped and the edge caught his hand. Big rolls. I told him it was a two-person job, not a one-person job, but as usual he didn’t listen. He’s a stubborn one.”
“Like you isn’t?” Bart snapped back.
Two Moons said, “When did this happen?”
“Four days ago,” Bart answered. “Never ended up taking the wire to surplus.”
“Sounds painful.”
Bart shrugged.
The detectives let the room go silent.
“You’re making a mistake if you’re thinking he had anything to do with it.” Emma shook her head. “Bart never done a cruel thing in his life. Even when he slaughters an animal, he does it with kindness.”
Katz said, “How do you do that, Mr. Skaggs?”
“Do what?”
“Slaughter with kindness.”
“Shoot ‘em,” said Skaggs. “Right here.” Reaching behind his neck, he fingered the soft spot where stalk met skull. “Shoot ’em at an upward angle. You wanna get ‘em in the medulla oblongata.”
“Not a shotgun, right?” said Katz. “Too messy from up close.”
Bart looked at him as if he were a space alien. “You use a long gun or a large-caliber handgun with a Magnum load.”
Emma stepped in front of her husband. “Let’s be clear: We never did any big-time slaughtering. That woulda been against regulations. We ship the cattle to a processing plant in Iowa, and they do everything from there. I was talking when we needed meat for our own table. I’d tell him, and he’d run an old steer into the pen and put it out of its misery. We never took the good beef for ourselves. But even with tired old beef, you dry-age it a couple of days in the refrigerator, then you marinate it, in beer or something, and you got yourself a tasty steak.”
Bart Skaggs stretched his free arm. The gauze bandage had yellowed around the edges and was dotted with blood. “Jewish rabbis use the knife across the throat. I seen ‘em do that over in Iowa. If you’re good with the knife and the knife’s real sharp, it’s fast. Those rabbis cut good. They don’t even stun ’em. If you’re not good, it’s messy.”
“You stun ‘em,” said Katz.
“Just in case.”
“Before you shoot ‘em.”
“Yup. To quiet ‘em down.”
“How do you go about it?”
“You distract ‘em by talking to ’em, nice and low and comforting. Then you hit ‘em upside the head.”
“The medulla?”
Bart shook his head. “In front, over the eyes. To confuse ‘em.”
“Hit ‘em with what?” said Katz.
“A bar,” said Bart. “A sledgehammer. I had a piece of axle from an old truck. That worked good.”
“I’m trying to picture it,” said Katz. “First you hit ‘em from the front, then you run around and shoot ’em from the back?”
The room fell silent.
“Am I missing something?” said Katz.
Emma turned stony. “I see where all this is leading, and you’re really wasting your time.”
Suddenly, her husband took hold of her arm and drew her back so that she was no longer blocking him. She started to speak but thought better of it.
Bart fixed his eyes on Katz’s. “If you’re doing the shooting, you’re not doing the stunning. Someone else stuns ‘em, and when their legs buckle, you shoot ’em. Otherwise, the animal goes skittish and it can jump and you miss. That happens, you have to shoot ‘em a bunch of times and it’s real messy.”
For him a long speech. Warming to the topic.
“Sounds like a two-person job,” Two Moons stated evenly.
More silence.
“Yup,” Bart finally said.
“We used to do it together,” said Emma. “I used the hammer and Bart used the gun. Same way we did everything back when we were ranching. Teamwork. That’s what it takes. That’s why we got a good marriage.”
“Cows are big animals,” said Darrel. “To get leverage you’d need to stand on top of something, right?”
“Why’s all this important?” said Emma.
“Call us curious, ma’am.”
She glared.
Katz said, “Do you stand on a ladder, Mr. Skaggs?”
“The animal’s in a pen,” said Bart. “Tight so it can’t move around too much. The way we had it at the ranch, the pen was dug out lower than the rest of the yard. You’d walk ‘em down a ramp to get in there. And then we used benches on top of that so we were tall enough.”
A small man feeling big as he slaughtered, thought Katz.