“No Freddy though?”
“No Freddy. At least not yet. He left a pretty clear set of tracks, so we’re going to follow up on that. Has Bobby come in the office yet?”
“In and then out again. He’s back in Cruces, but says he’ll be home this afternoon.”
“Okay.” Estelle mentally riffled through the list of available staff. The county was still hers, and if there was a call in the village of Posadas, she was half an hour away.
“Jackie is having coffee with David Miller,” Gayle said. Estelle had noticed with some amusement that of late Deputy Jackie Taber, denizen of the graveyard shift, often managed to find a moment to converse with the young state policeman when their paths crossed-perhaps one or both of them helped managed their activities so that paths did cross. Estelle heard a voice in the background. “She says she’ll cover for you until you’re clear,” Gayle added.
“Good enough. And if Freddy has already contacted his parents, let me know.” She switched off and glanced at Gastner. “You want a job?”
The former sheriff laughed. “Not even a remote chance, sweetheart. Thirty years is long enough. Now I’m embarking on an in-depth study of life on the sidelines.” He shifted in his seat. “You’ll remember that I came along merely on the promise of some breakfast…which we still have ignored.”
“Have an MRE, sir.”
“You know, the brownies in those things are really pretty good. And the crackers and cheese aren’t bad. So don’t tempt me.”
They followed the ATV’s tracks back to the highway, and then southwest along State 56. A mile beyond, the saloon’s parking lot was heavily graveled, but the ATV’s tracks marked the grass perimeter, then actually passing close to the east wall of the building. Behind the saloon and the owner’s modest mobile home, behind a scattering of defunct cars and trucks some of which had slipped down into the arroyo, a two-track cut sharply down the bank. A brown pond of water marked one of the flats in the arroyo bottom, and tracks crisscrossed the gravel and sand.
“We can assume he went this way,” Gastner said. “Maybe.”
“I saw him turn into the saloon parking lot, and then disappear behind the building.” She urged the Expedition into four-wheel drive and turned into the arroyo. The decent was so steep that the rear bumper gouged gravel at the bottom. A ledge of rock half-way up the other side bucked the Expedition, and it kicked sand and gravel, with nothing but a view of the sky as they reared up and out on the far side.
“I haven’t been here in a long time.” Gastner lowered his window. “It’s going to get hot today.” The two-track meandered across the prairie, already beginning to shimmer in the heat. The lane headed toward the low mesas to the north. For the first half mile, the going was reasonably smooth, the dried vegetation between the tracks raking the underside of the SUV, the fragrance powerful. Sand and prairie scrub gave way to a vast, gentle dome of gravel and rocks where the tracks of the ATV vanished.
“Stop a second,” Gastner said at one point. He twisted in his seat and looked eastward, then reached across for the binoculars that rested in the center console. “It’d be a hell of a walk, no matter which way he went. Herb Torrance’s place is way the hell off to the west, and Prescotts’ is a long hike back to the east, off behind those little hills, there.” He searched the prairie for a moment and then shrugged. “The only thing that makes sense to me is that Freddy was headed to where this trail crosses Bender’s Canyon.”
“Maybe so.” She shut off the engine and they sat in silence, letting the breeze waft through the vehicle. In the distance, two ravens made sure everyone knew there were intruders.
“You don’t have a whole lot of choices,” Gastner said. “From here you can cut down this grade and end up T-boning into Bender’s Canyon Trail. Then you hang a left, and head back toward the county road. Or you can go right along the trail and go northeast, around the backside of Herb Torrance’s spread. You’ll swing around to the county road again…eventually…or continue on north to the state highway.” He patted the door sill as if marking time. “Or, we could get out and walk for a bit and make like trackers, trying to pick up the ATV’s footprint.” He squinted up at the blank blue of the sky.
Estelle popped her door, and Gastner grimaced. “That’s what I thought.”
“If Freddy had come home last night, I wouldn’t be concerned,” the undersheriff said. “But I’d hate to think that he might be lying out here somewhere with a broken leg…or worse. That would have made for a long, long night.”
Gastner touched his cap back and wiped his forehead. “No danger of hypothermia, though. You ought to have Bergin up flying if you want to search this country. You could hide a tank out here, you know.”
“That’s next, Padrino. ”
For less than five minutes, the two searched the balding top of the rise. The most logical route-straight ahead-turned results. The ATV’s knobbed tracks showed up on the north side of the slope, cutting across the rough terrain to join the two-track that came in from the west.
Estelle jogged back to the Expedition, and after thumping and bumping down off the slope, the relative smooth going on the two packed tracks of Bender’s Canyon Trail felt like a paved highway. The trail crossed the canyon bottom twice before settling down on the north side of the arroyo. The tracks were easy to follow where they cut into the softer ground. For another mile, the two-track wound almost due east, then swung wide around the buttress of a ragged mesa. Car-sized boulders had peeled off the mesa rim above them, and at one point the trail squeezed between a jumble of rocks that towered a dozen feet above the SUV’s roof.
“Herb always called this ‘the window,’” Bill Gastner observed as Estelle maneuvered the vehicle through, less than an inch clearance beyond the side mirrors. “He’s lost a lot of paint off his trucks and livestock trailers in this particular spot.”
The trail turned north, the country opening up to prairie that rolled in gentle waves like a tan blanket snapped not quite flat. They could see Bender’s Canyon Trail winding ahead of them, up the rise of open country.
“Freddy probably puts more miles on that ATV of his than any other kid in the world,” Estelle said.
“I admire him,” Gastner said. “You know, most kids are content to rod it up and down the streets, or dust up vacant lots. This kids goes on adventures. I love it. If I wasn’t so goddamn fat and old and creaky, I’d buy me one and chase after him.”
“I’m starting to wish that someone had gone with him,” Estelle added.
The two-track climbed the rise, and then bordered a stand of dense juniper and scrub as another deep arroyo closed in from the northeast. A small foundation, now nothing but a uniform line of limestone rocks emerging a few inches from the dirt, edged the runty junipers and creosote bush. An old corral, the posts gray and smooth, enclosed an area behind the foundation, and the remains of a fence meandered off into the distance. Various rusted machinery parts, a scattering of cans, and the tiny cab of an ancient truck marked a spot where someone, sometime, had felt that he’d found paradise.
“Morris Trujillo’s grandfather,” Gastner said, and Estelle looked at him with amusement. “Efugio. He came back from the Philippines in 1943, deaf in one ear and with a plate in his skull. He tried to live here for a couple years, couldn’t make it work, and then moved into town.”
Estelle surveyed what was left of the tiny homestead. “And left his truck behind.”
“We could make up all kinds of interesting stories about why that happened,” Gastner laughed. “It’s a 1928 Ford.”